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Church, and to whom Dante gave special honour in paradise, set upon this belief his high authority. The lives of the saints, and the chronicles of the Middle Ages, were filled with it. Poetry and painting accepted the idea and developed it. Dante wedded it to verse, and at Venice this thought may still be seen embodied in one of the grand pictures of Bordone: a shipload of demons is seen approaching Venice in a storm, threatening destruction to the city, but St. Mark, St. George, and St. Nicholas attack the vessel, and disperse the hellish crew.[219]

[219] For Bede, see the Hist. Eccles., vol. i, p. 17; Vita Cuthberti, c. 17 (Migne, tome xliv). For Thomas Aquinas, see the Summa, pars I, qu. lxxx, art. 2. The second citation I owe to Rydberg, Magic of the Middle Ages, p. 73, where the whole interesting passage is given at length. For Albertus Magnus, see the De Potentia Daemonum (cited by Maury, Legendes Pieuses). For Bonaventura, see the Comp. Theol. Veritat., ii, 26. For Dante, see Purgatorio, c. 5. On Bordone’s picture, see Maury, Legendes Pieuses, p. 18, note.

The popes again and again sanctioned this doctrine, and it was amalgamated with various local superstitions, pious imaginations, and interesting arguments, to strike the fancy of the people at large. A strong argument in favour of a diabolical origin of the thunderbolt was afforded by the eccentricities of its operation. These attracted especial attention in the Middle Ages, and the popular love of marvel generalized isolated phenomena into rules. Thus it was said that the lightning strikes the sword in the sheath, gold in the purse, the foot in the shoe, leaving sheath and purse and shoe unharmed; that it consumes a human being internally without injuring the skin; that it destroys nets in the water, but not on the land; that it kills one man, and leaves untouched another standing beside him; that it can tear through a house and enter the earth without moving a stone from its place; that it injures the heart of a tree, but not the bark; that wine is poisoned by it, while poisons struck by it lose their venom; that a man’s hair may be consumed by it and the man be unhurt.[220]

[220] See, for lists of such admiranda, any of the early writers–e. g., Vincent of Beauvais, Reisch’s Margarita, or Eck’s Aristotle.

These peculiar phenomena, made much of by the allegorizing sermonizers of the day, were used in moral lessons from every pulpit. Thus the Carmelite, Matthias Farinator, of Vienna, who at the Pope’s own instance compiled early in the fifteenth century that curious handbook of illustrative examples for preachers, the Lumen Animae, finds a spiritual analogue for each of these anomalies.[221]

[221] See the Lumen animae, Eichstadt, 1479.

This doctrine grew, robust and noxious, until, in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, we find its bloom in a multitude of treatises by the most learned of the Catholic and Protestant divines, and its fruitage in the torture chambers and on the scaffolds throughout Christendom. At the Reformation period, and for nearly two hundred years afterward, Catholics and Protestants vied with each other in promoting this growth. John Eck, the great opponent of Luther, gave to the world an annotated edition of Aristotle’s Physics, which was long authoritative in the German universities; and, though the text is free from this doctrine, the woodcut illustrating the earth’s atmosphere shows most vividly, among the clouds of mid-air, the devils who there reign supreme.[222]

[222] See Eck, Aristotelis Meteorologica, Augsburg, 1519.

Luther, in the other religious camp, supported the superstition even more zealously, asserting at times his belief that the winds themselves are only good or evil spirits, and declaring that a stone thrown into a certain pond in his native region would cause a dreadful storm because of the devils, kept prisoners there.[223]

[223] For Luther, see the Table Talk; also Michelet, Life of Luther (translated by Hazlitt, p. 321).

Just at the close of the same century, Catholics and Protestants welcomed alike the great work of Delrio. In this, the power of devils over the elements is proved first from the Holy Scriptures, since, he declares, “they show that Satan brought fire down from heaven to consume the servants and flocks of Job, and that he stirred up a violent wind, which overwhelmed in ruin the sons and daughters of Job at their feasting.” Next, Delrio insists on the agreement of all the orthodox fathers, that it was the devil himself who did this, and attention is called to the fact that the hail with which the Egyptians were punished is expressly declared in Holy Scripture to have been brought by the evil angels. Citing from the Apocalypse, he points to the four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the winds and preventing their doing great damage to mortals; and he dwells especially upon the fact that the devil is called by the apostle a “prince of the power of the air.” He then goes on to cite the great fathers of the Church–Clement, Jerome, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas.[224]

[224] For Delrio, see his Disquisitiones Magicae, first printed at Liege in 1599-1600, but reprinted again and again throughout the seventeenth century. His interpretation of Psalm lxxviii, 47-49, was apparently shared by the translators of our own authorized edition. For citations by him, see Revelation vii, 1,; Ephesians ii, 2. Even according to modern commentators (e.g., Alford), the word here translated “power” denotes not MIGHT, but GOVERNMENT, COURT, HIERARCHY; and in this sense it was always used by the ecclesiastical writers, whose conception is best rendered by our plural–“powers.” See Delrio, Disquisitiones Magicae, lib. ii, c. 11.

This doctrine was spread not only in ponderous treatises, but in light literature and by popular illustrations. In the Compendium Maleficarum of the Italian monk Guacci, perhaps the most amusing book in the whole literature of witchcraft, we may see the witch, in propria persona, riding the diabolic goat through the clouds while the storm rages around and beneath her; and we may read a rich collection of anecdotes, largely contemporary, which establish the required doctrine beyond question.

The first and most natural means taken against this work of Satan in the air was prayer; and various petitions are to be found scattered through the Christian liturgies–some very beautiful and touching. This means of escape has been relied upon, with greater or less faith, from those days to these. Various medieval saints and reformers, and devoted men in all centuries, from St. Giles to John Wesley, have used it with results claimed to be miraculous. Whatever theory any thinking man may hold in the matter, he will certainly not venture a reproachful word: such prayers have been in all ages a natural outcome of the mind of man in trouble.[225]

[225] For Guacci, see his Compendium Maleficarum (Milan, 1608). For the cases of St. Giles, John Wesley, and others stilling the tempests, see Brewer, Dictionary of Miracles, s. v. Prayer.

But against the “power of the air” were used other means of a very different character and tendency, and foremost among these was exorcism. In an exorcism widely used and ascribed to Pope Gregory XIII, the formula is given: “I, a priest of Christ,… do command ye, most foul spirits, who do stir up these clouds,… that ye depart from them, and disperse yourselves into wild and untilled places, that ye may be no longer able to harm men or animals or fruits or herbs, or whatsoever is designed for human use.” But this is mild, indeed, compared to some later exorcisms, as when the ritual runs: “All the people shall rise, and the priest, turning toward the clouds, shall pronounce these words: `I exorcise ye, accursed demons, who have dared to use, for the accomplishment of your iniquity, those powers of Nature by which God in divers ways worketh good to mortals; who stir up winds, gather vapours, form clouds, and condense them into hail….I exorcise ye,…that ye relinquish the work ye have begun, dissolve the hail, scatter the clouds, disperse the vapours, and restrain the winds.'” The rubric goes on to order that then there shall be a great fire kindled in an open place, and that over it the sign of the cross shall be made, and the one hundred and fourteenth Psalm chanted, while malodorous substances, among them sulphur and asafoetida, shall be cast into the flames. The purpose seems to have been literally to “smoke out” Satan.[226]

[226] See Polidorus Valerius, Practica exorcistarum; also the Thesaurus exorcismorum (Cologne, 1626), pp. 158-162.

Manuals of exorcisms became important–some bulky quartos, others handbooks. Noteworthy among the latter is one by the Italian priest Locatelli, entitled Exorcisms most Powerful and Efficacious for the Dispelling of Aerial Tempests, whether raised by Demons at their own Instance or at the Beck of some Servant of the Devil.[227]

[227] That is, Exorcismi, etc. A “corrected” second edition was printed at Laybach, 1680, in 24mo, to which is appended another manual of Preces et conjurationes contra aereas tempestates, omnibus sacerdotibus utiles et necessaria, printed at the monastery of Kempten (in Bavaria) in 1667. The latter bears as epigraph the passage from the gospels describing Christ’s stilling of the winds.

The Jesuit Gretser, in his famous book on Benedictions and Maledictions, devotes a chapter to this subject, dismissing summarily the scepticism that questions the power of devils over the elements, and adducing the story of Job as conclusive.[228]

[228] See Gretser, De benedictionibus et maledictionibus, lib. ii, c. 48.

Nor was this theory of exorcism by any means confined to the elder Church. Luther vehemently upheld it, and prescribed especially the first chapter of St. John’s gospel as of unfailing efficacy against thunder and lightning, declaring that he had often found the mere sign of the cross, with the text, “The word was made flesh,” sufficient to put storms to flight.[229]

[229] So, at least, says Gretser (in his De ben. et aml., as above).

From the beginning of the Middle Ages until long after the Reformation the chronicles give ample illustration of the successful use of such exorcisms. So strong was the belief in them that it forced itself into minds comparatively rational, and found utterance in treatises of much importance.

But, since exorcisms were found at times ineffectual, other means were sought, and especially fetiches of various sorts. One of the earliest of these appeared when Pope Alexander I, according to tradition, ordained that holy water should be kept in churches and bedchambers to drive away devils.[230] Another safeguard was found in relics, and of similar efficacy were the so-called “conception billets” sold by the Carmelite monks. They contained a formula upon consecrated paper, at which the devil might well turn pale. Buried in the corner of a field, one of these was thought to give protection against bad weather and destructive insects.[231]

[230] “Instituit ut aqua quam sanctum appellamus sale admixta interpositus sacris orationibus et in templis et in cubiculis ad fugandos daemones retineretur.” Platina, Vitae Pontif. But the story is from the False Decretals.

[231] See Rydberg, The Magic of the Middle Ages, translated by Edgren, pp. 63-66.

But highest in repute during centuries was the Agnus Dei–a piece of wax blessed by the Pope’s own hand, and stamped with the well-known device representing the “Lamb of God.” Its powers were so marvellous that Pope Urban V thought three of these cakes a fitting gift from himself to the Greek Emperor. In the Latin doggerel recounting their virtues, their meteorological efficacy stands first, for especial stress is laid on their power of dispelling the thunder. The stress thus laid by Pope Urban, as the infallible guide of Christendom, on the efficacy of this fetich, gave it great value throughout Europe, and the doggerel verses reciting its virtues sank deep into the popular mind. It was considered a most potent means of dispelling hail, pestilence, storms, conflagrations, and enchantments; and this feeling was deepened by the rules and rites for its consecration. So solemn was the matter, that the manufacture and sale of this particular fetich was, by a papal bull of 1471, reserved for the Pope himself, and he only performed the required ceremony in the first and seventh years of his pontificate. Standing unmitred, he prayed: “O God,…we humbly beseech thee that thou wilt bless these waxen forms, figured with the image of an innocent lamb,… that, at the touch and sight of them, the faithful may break forth into praises, and that the crash of hailstorms, the blast of hurricanes, the violence of tempests, the fury of winds, and the malice of thunderbolts may be tempered, and evil spirits flee and tremble before the standard of thy holy cross, which is graven upon them.”[232]

[232] These pious charms are still in use in the Church, and may be found described in any ecclesiastical cyclopaedia. The doggerel verses run as follows:

“Tonitrua magna terret, Inimicos nostras domat Et peccata nostra delet; Praegnantem cum partu salvat, Ab incendio praeservat, Dona dignis multa confert, A subersione servat, Utque malis mala defert. A morte cita liberat, Portio, quamvis parva sit, Et Cacodaemones fugat, Ut magna tamen proficit.”

See these verses cited in full faith, so late as 1743, in Father Vincent of Berg’s Enchiridium, pp. 23, 24, where is an ample statement of the virtues of the Agnus Dei, and istructions for its use. A full account of the rites used in consecrating this fetich, with the prayers and benedictions which gave colour to this theory of the powers of the Agnus Dei, may be found in the ritual of the Church. I have used the edition entitled Sacrarum ceremoniarum sive rituum Sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae libri tres, Rome, 1560, in folio. The form of the papal prayer is as follows: “Deus . . . te supplicater deprecamur, ut . . . has cereas formas, innocentissimi agni imagine figuritas, benedicere . . . digneris, ut per ejus tactum et visum fideles invitentur as laudes, fragor grandinum, procella turbinum, impetus tempestatum, ventorum rabies, infesta tonitrua temperentur, fugiant atque tremiscant maligni spiritus ante Sanctae Crucis vexillum, quod in illis exculptum est. . . .”(Sacr. Cer. Rom. Eccl., as above). If any are curious as to the extent to which this consecrated wax was a specific for all spiritual and most temporal ills during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, let them consult the Jesuit Litterae annuae, passim.

Another favourite means with the clergy of the older Church for bringing to naught the “power of the air,” was found in great processions bearing statues, relics, and holy emblems through the streets. Yet even these were not always immediately effective. One at Liege, in the thirteenth century, thrice proved unsuccessful in bringing rain, when at last it was found that the image of the Virgin had been forgotten! A new procession was at once formed, the Salve Regina sung, and the rain came down in such torrents as to drive the devotees to shelter.[233]

[233] John of Winterthur describes many such processions in Switzerland in the thirteenth century, and all the monkish chronicles speak of them. See also Rydberg, Magic of the Middle Ages, p. 74.

In Catholic lands this custom remains to this day, and very important features in these processions are the statues and the reliquaries of patron saints. Some of these excel in bringing sunshine, others in bringing rain. The Cathedral of Chartres is so fortunate as to possess sundry relics of St. Taurin, especially potent against dry weather, and some of St. Piat, very nearly as infallible against wet weather. In certain regions a single saint gives protection alternately against wet and dry weather–as, for example, St. Godeberte at Noyon. Against storms St. Barbara is very generally considered the most powerful protectress; but, in the French diocese of Limoges, Notre Dame de Crocq has proved a most powerful rival, for when, a few years since, all the neighbouring parishes were ravaged by storms, not a hailstone fell in the canton which she protected. In the diocese of Tarbes, St. Exupere is especially invoked against hail, peasants flocking from all the surrounding country to his shrine.[234]

[234] As to protection by special saints as stated, see the Guide du touriste et du pelerin a Chartes, 1867 (cited by “Paul Parfait,” in his Dossier des Pelerinages); also pp. 139-145 of the Dossier.

But the means of baffling the powers of the air which came to be most widely used was the ringing of consecrated church bells.

This usage had begun in the time of Charlemagne, and there is extant a prohibition of his against the custom of baptizing bells and of hanging certain tags[235] on their tongues as a protection against hailstorms; but even Charlemagne was powerless against this current of medieval superstition. Theological reasons were soon poured into it, and in the year 968 Pope John XIII gave it the highest ecclesiastical sanction by himself baptizing the great bell of his cathedral church, the Lateran, and christening it with his own name.[236]

[235] Perticae. See Montanus, Hist. Nachricht van den Glocken (Chenmitz, 1726), p. 121; and Meyer, Der Aberglaube des Mittelalters, p. 186.

[236] For statements regarding Pope John and bell superstitions, see Higgins’s Anacalypsis, vol. ii, p. 70. See also Platina, Vitae Pontif., s. v. John XIII, and Baronius, Annales Ecclesiastici, sub anno 968. The conjecture of Baronius that the bell was named after St. John the Baptist, is even more startling than the accepted tradition of the Pope’s sponsorship.

This idea was rapidly developed, and we soon find it supported in ponderous treatises, spread widely in sermons, and popularized in multitudes of inscriptions cast upon the bells themselves. This branch of theological literature may still be studied in multitudes of church towers throughout Europe. A bell at Basel bears the inscription, “Ad fugandos demones.” Another, in Lugano, declares “The sound of this bell vanquishes tempests, repels demons, and summons men.” Another, at the Cathedral of Erfurt, declares that it can “ward off lightning and malignant demons.” A peal in the Jesuit church at the university town of Pont-a-Mousson bore the words, “They praise God, put to flight the clouds, affright the demons, and call the people.” This is dated 1634. Another bell in that part of France declares, “It is I who dissipate the thunders”(Ego sum qui dissipo tonitrua).[237]

[237] For these illustrations, with others equally striking, see Meyer, Der Aberglaube des Mittelalters, pp. 185, 186. For the later examples, see Germain, Anciennes cloches lorraines (Nancy, 1885), pp. 23, 27.

Another, in one of the forest cantons of Switzerland, bears a doggerel couplet, which may be thus translated:

“On the devil my spite I’ll vent,
And, God helping, bad weather prevent.”[238]

[238] “An dem Tufel will cih mich rachen, Mit der hilf gotz alle bosen wetter erbrechen.” (See Meyer, as above.)

Very common were inscriptions embodying this doctrine in sonorous Latin.

Naturally, then, there grew up a ritual for the consecration of bells. Knollys, in his quaint translation of the old chronicler Sleidan, gives us the usage in the simple English of the middle of the sixteenth century:

“In lyke sorte [as churches] are the belles used. And first, forsouth, they must hange so, as the Byshop may goe round about them. Whiche after he hath sayde certen Psalmes, he consecrateth water and salte, and mingleth them together, wherwith he washeth the belle diligently both within and without, after wypeth it drie, and with holy oyle draweth in it the signe of the crosse, and prayeth God, that whan they shall rynge or sounde that bell, all the disceiptes of the devyll may vanyshe away, hayle, thondryng, lightening, wyndes, and tempestes, and all untemperate weathers may be aswaged. Whan he hath wipte out the crosse of oyle wyth a linen cloth, he maketh seven other crosses in the same, and within one only. After saying certen Psalmes, he taketh a payre of sensours and senseth the bel within, and prayeth God to sende it good lucke. In many places they make a great dyner, and kepe a feast as it were at a solemne wedding.”[239]

[239] Sleiden’s Commentaries, English translation, as above, fol. 334 (lib. xxi, sub anno 1549).

These bell baptisms became matters of great importance. Popes, kings, and prelates were proud to stand as sponsors. Four of the bells at the Cathedral of Versailles having been destroyed during the French Revolution, four new ones were baptized, on the 6th of January, 1824, the Voltairean King, Louis XVIII, and the pious Duchess d’Angouleme standing as sponsors.

In some of these ceremonies zeal appears to have outrun knowledge, and one of Luther’s stories, at the expense of the older Church, was that certain authorities thus christened a bell “Hosanna,” supposing that to be the name of a woman.

To add to the efficacy of such baptisms, water was sometimes brought from the river Jordan.[240]

[240] See Montanus, as above, who cites Beck, Lutherthum vor Luthero, p. 294, for the statement that many bells were carried to the Jordan by pilgrims for this purpose.

The prayers used at bell baptisms fully recognise this doctrine. The ritual of Paris embraces the petition that, “whensoever this bell shall sound, it shall drive away the malign influences of the assailing spirits, the horror of their apparitions, the rush of whirlwinds, the stroke of lightning, the harm of thunder, the disasters of storms, and all the spirits of the tempest.” Another prayer begs that “the sound of this bell may put to flight the fiery darts of the enemy of men”; and others vary the form but not the substance of this petition. The great Jesuit theologian, Bellarmin, did indeed try to deny the reality of this baptism; but this can only be regarded as a piece of casuistry suited to Protestant hardness of heart, or as strategy in the warfare against heretics.[241]

[241] For prayers at bell baptisms, see Arago, Oeuvres, Paris, 1854, vol. iv, p. 322.

Forms of baptism were laid down in various manuals sanctioned directly by papal authority, and sacramental efficacy was everywhere taken for granted.[242] The development of this idea in the older Church was too strong to be resisted;[243] but, as a rule, the Protestant theologians of the Reformation, while admitting that storms were caused by Satan and his legions, opposed the baptism of bells, and denied the theory of their influence in dispersing storms. Luther, while never doubting that troublesome meteorological phenomena were caused by devils, regarded with contempt the idea that the demons were so childish as to be scared by the clang of bells; his theory made them altogether too powerful to be affected by means so trivial. The great English Reformers, while also accepting very generally the theory of diabolic interference in storms, reproved strongly the baptizing of bells, as the perversion of a sacrament and involving blasphemy. Bishop Hooper declared reliance upon bells to drive away tempests, futile. Bishop Pilkington, while arguing that tempests are direct instruments of God’s wrath, is very severe against using “unlawful means,” and among these he names “the hallowed bell”; and these opinions were very generally shared by the leading English clergy.[244]

[242] As has often been pointed out, the ceremony was in all its details–even to the sponsors, the wrapping a garment about the baptised, the baptismal fee, the feast–precisely the same as when a child was baptised. Magius, who is no sceptic, relates from his own experience an instant of this sort, where a certain bishop stood sponsor for two bells, giving them both his own name–William. (See his De Tintinnabulis, vol. xiv.)

[243] And no wonder, when the oracle of the Church, Thomas Aquinas, expressly pronounced church bells, “provided they have been duly consecrated and baptised,” the foremost means of “frustrating the atmospheric mischiefs of the devil,” and likened steeples in which bells are ringing to a hen brooding her chickens, “for the tones of the consecrated metal repel the demons and avert storm and lightning”; when pre-Reformation preachers of such universal currency as Johannes Herolt declared, “Bells, as all agree, are baptised with the result that they are secure from the power of Satan, terrify the demons, compel the powers”; when Geiler of Kaiserberg especially commended bell- ringing as a means of beating off the devil in storms; and when a canonist like Durandus explained the purpose of the rite to be, that “the demons hearing the trumpets of the Eternal King, to wit, the bells, may flee in terror, and may cease from the stirring up of tempests.” See Herolt, Sermones Discipuli, vol. xvii, and Durandus, De ritibus ecclesiae, vol. ii, p. 12. I owe the first of these citations to Rydberg, and the others to Montanus. For Geiler, see Dacheux, Geiler de Kaiserberg, pp. 280, 281.

[244] The baptism of bells was indeed, one of the express complaints of the German Protestant princes at the Reformation. See their Gravam. Cent. German. Grav., p. 51. For Hooper, see his Early Writings, p. 197 (in Parker Society Publications). For Pilkington, see his Works, p. 177 (in same). Among others sharing these opinions were Tyndale, Bishop Ridley, Archbishop Sandys, Becon, Calfhill, and Rogers. It is to be noted that all of these speak of the rite as “baptism.”

Toward the end of the sixteenth century the Elector of Saxony strictly forbade the ringing of bells against storms, urging penance and prayer instead; but the custom was not so easily driven out of the Protestant Church, and in some quarters was developed a Protestant theory of a rationalistic sort, ascribing the good effects of bell-ringing in storms to the calling together of the devout for prayer or to the suggestion of prayers during storms at night. As late as the end of the seventeenth century we find the bells of Protestant churches in northern Germany rung for the dispelling of tempests. In Catholic Austria this bell-ringing seems to have become a nuisance in the last century, for the Emperor Joseph II found it necessary to issue an edict against it; but this doctrine had gained too large headway to be arrested by argument or edict, and the bells may be heard ringing during storms to this day in various remote districts in Europe.[245] For this was no mere superficial view. It was really part of a deep theological current steadily developed through the Middle Ages, the fundamental idea of the whole being the direct influence of the bells upon the “Power of the Air”; and it is perhaps worth our while to go back a little and glance over the coming of this current into the modern world. Having grown steadily through the Middle Ages, it appeared in full strength at the Reformation period; and in the sixteenth century Olaus Magnus, Archbishop of Upsala and Primate of Sweden, in his great work on the northern nations, declares it a well-established fact that cities and harvests may be saved from lightning by the ringing of bells and the burning of consecrated incense, accompanied by prayers; and he cautions his readers that the workings of the thunderbolt are rather to be marvelled at than inquired into. Even as late as 1673 the Franciscan professor Lealus, in Italy, in a schoolbook which was received with great applause in his region, taught unhesitatingly the agency of demons in storms, and the power of bells over them, as well as the portentousness of comets and the movement of the heavens by angels. He dwells especially, too, upon the perfect protection afforded by the waxen Agnus Dei. How strong this current was, and how difficult even for philosophical minds to oppose, is shown by the fact that both Descartes and Francis Bacon speak of it with respect, admitting the fact, and suggesting very mildly that the bells may accomplish this purpose by the concussion of the air.[246]

[245] For Elector of Saxony, see Peuchen, Disp. circa tempestates, Jena, 1697. For the Protestant theory of bells, see, e. g., the Ciciones Selectae of Superintendent Conrad Dieterich (cited by Peuchen, Disp. circa tempestates). For Protestant ringing of bells to dispel tempests, see Schwimmer, Physicalische Luftfragen, 1692 (cited by Peuchen, as above). He pictures the whole population of a Thuringinian district flocking to the churches on the approach of a storm.

[246] For Olaus Magnus, see the De gentibus septentrionalibus (Rome, 1555), lib. i, c. 12, 13. For Descartes, see his De meteor., cent. 2, 127. In his Historia Ventorum he again alludes to the belief, and without comment.

But no such moderate doctrine sufficed, and the renowned Bishop Binsfeld, of Treves, in his noted treatise on the credibility of the confessions of witches, gave an entire chapter to the effect of bells in calming atmospheric disturbances. Basing his general doctrine upon the first chapter of Job and the second chapter of Ephesians, he insisted on the reality of diabolic agency in storms; and then, by theological reasoning, corroborated by the statements extorted in the torture chamber, he showed the efficacy of bells in putting the hellish legions to flight.[247] This continued, therefore, an accepted tenet, developed in every nation, and coming to its climax near the end of the seventeenth century. At that period–the period of Isaac Newton–Father Augustine de Angelis, rector of the Clementine College at Rome, published under the highest Church authority his lectures upon meteorology. Coming from the centre of Catholic Christendom, at so late a period, they are very important as indicating what had been developed under the influence of theology during nearly seventeen hundred years. This learned head of a great college at the heart of Christendom taught that “the surest remedy against thunder is that which our Holy Mother the Church practises, namely, the ringing of bells when a thunderbolt impends: thence follows a twofold effect, physical and moral–a physical, because the sound variously disturbs and agitates the air, and by agitation disperses the hot exhalations and dispels the thunder; but the moral effect is the more certain, because by the sound the faithful are stirred to pour forth their prayers, by which they win from God the turning away of the thunderbolt.” Here we see in this branch of thought, as in so many others, at the close of the seventeenth century, the dawn of rationalism. Father De Angelis now keeps demoniacal influence in the background. Little, indeed, is said of the efficiency of bells in putting to flight the legions of Satan: the wise professor is evidently preparing for that inevitable compromise which we see in the history of every science when it is clear that it can no longer be suppressed by ecclesiastical fulminations.[248]

[247] See Binsfeld, De Confessionbus Malef., pp. 308-314, edition of 1623.

[248] For De Angelis, see his Lectiones Meteorol., p. 75.

III. THE AGENCY OF WITCHES.

But, while this comparatively harmless doctrine of thwarting the powers of the air by fetiches and bell-ringing was developed, there were evolved another theory, and a series of practices sanctioned by the Church, which must forever be considered as among the most fearful calamities in human history. Indeed, few errors have ever cost so much shedding of innocent blood over such wide territory and during so many generations. Out of the old doctrine–pagan and Christian–of evil agency in atmospheric phenomena was evolved the belief that certain men, women, and children may secure infernal aid to produce whirlwinds, hail, frosts, floods, and the like.

As early as the ninth century one great churchman, Agobard, Archbishop of Lyons, struck a heavy blow at this superstition. His work, Against the Absurd Opinion of the Vulgar touching Hail and Thunder, shows him to have been one of the most devoted apostles of right reason whom human history has known. By argument and ridicule, and at times by a lofty eloquence, he attempted to breast this tide. One passage is of historical significance. He declares: “The wretched world lies now under the tyranny of foolishness; things are believed by Christians of such absurdity as no one ever could aforetime induce the heathen to believe.”[249]

[249] For a very interesting statement of Agobard’s position and work, with citations from his Liber contra insulsam vulgi opinionem de grandine et tonitruis, see Poole, Illustrations of the History of Mediaeval Thought, pp. 40 et seq. The works of Agobard are in vol. civ of Migne’s Patrol. Lat.

All in vain; the tide of superstition continued to roll on; great theologians developed it and ecclesiastics favoured it; until as we near the end of the medieval period the infallible voice of Rome is heard accepting it, and clinching this belief into the mind of Christianity. For, in 1437, Pope Eugene IV, by virtue of the teaching power conferred on him by the Almighty, and under the divine guarantee against any possible error in the exercise of it, issued a bull exhorting the inquisitors of heresy and witchcraft to use greater diligence against the human agents of the Prince of Darkness, and especially against those who have the power to produce bad weather. In 1445 Pope Eugene returned again to the charge, and again issued instructions and commands infallibly committing the Church to the doctrine. But a greater than Eugene followed, and stamped the idea yet more deeply into the mind of the Church. On the 7th of December, 1484, Pope Innocent VIII sent forth his bull Summis Desiderantes. Of all documents ever issued from Rome, imperial or papal, this has doubtless, first and last, cost the greatest shedding of innocent blood. Yet no document was ever more clearly dictated by conscience. Inspired by the scriptural command, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,” Pope Innocent exhorted the clergy of Germany to leave no means untried to detect sorcerers, and especially those who by evil weather destroy vineyards, gardens, meadows, and growing crops. These precepts were based upon various texts of Scripture, especially upon the famous statement in the book of Job; and, to carry them out, witch-finding inquisitors were authorized by the Pope to scour Europe, especially Germany, and a manual was prepared for their use–the Witch-Hammer, Malleus Maleficarum. In this manual, which was revered for centuries, both in Catholic and Protestant countries, as almost divinely inspired, the doctrine of Satanic agency in atmospheric phenomena was further developed, and various means of detecting and punishing it were dwelt upon.[250]

[250] For the bull of Pope Eugene, see Raynaldus, Annales Eccl., pp. 1437, 1445. The Latin text of the bull Summis Desiderantes may now be found in the Malleus Maleficarum, in Binsfeld’s De Confessionibus cited below, or in Roskoff’s Geschichte des Teufles (Leipsic, 1869), vol. i, pp. 222-225. There is, so far as I know, no good analysis, in any English book, of the contents of the Witch-Hammer; but such may be found in Roskoff’s Geschichte des Teufels, or in Soldan’s Geschichte der Hexenprozesse. Its first dated edition is that of 1489; but Prof. Burr has shown that it was printed as early as 1486. It was, happily, never translated into any modern tongue.

With the application of torture to thousands of women, in accordance with the precepts laid down in the Malleus, it was not difficult to extract masses of proof for this sacred theory of meteorology. The poor creatures, writhing on the rack, held in horror by those who had been nearest and dearest to them, anxious only for death to relieve their sufferings, confessed to anything and everything that would satisfy the inquisitors and judges. All that was needed was that the inquisitors should ask leading questions[251] and suggest satisfactory answers: the prisoners, to shorten the torture, were sure sooner or later to give the answer required, even though they knew that this would send them to the stake or scaffold. Under the doctrine of “excepted cases,” there was no limit to torture for persons accused of heresy or witchcraft; even the safeguards which the old pagan world had imposed upon torture were thus thrown down, and the prisoner MUST confess.

[251] For still extant lists of such questions, see the Zeitschrift fur deutsche Culturgeschichte for 1858, pp. 522-528, or Diefenbach, Der Hexenwahn in Deutschland, pp. 15-17. Father Vincent of Berg (in his Enchiridium) gives a similar list for use by priests in the confession of the accused. Manuscript lists of this sort which have actually done service in the courts of Baden and Bavaria may be seen in the library of Cornell University.

The theological literature of the Middle Ages was thus enriched with numberless statements regarding modes of Satanic influence on the weather. Pathetic, indeed, are the records; and none more so than the confessions of these poor creatures, chiefly women and children, during hundreds of years, as to their manner of raising hailstorms and tempests. Such confessions, by tens of thousands, are still to be found in the judicial records of Germany, and indeed of all Europe. Typical among these is one on which great stress was laid during ages, and for which the world was first indebted to one of these poor women. Crazed by the agony of torture, she declared that, returning with a demon through the air from the witches’ sabbath, she was dropped upon the earth in the confusion which resulted among the hellish legions when they heard the bells sounding the Ave Maria. It is sad to note that, after a contribution so valuable to sacred science, the poor woman was condemned to the flames. This revelation speedily ripened the belief that, whatever might be going on at the witches’ sabbath–no matter how triumphant Satan might be–at the moment of sounding the consecrated bells the Satanic power was paralyzed. This theory once started, proofs came in to support it, during a hundred years, from the torture chambers in all parts of Europe.

Throughout the later Middle Ages the Dominicans had been the main agents in extorting and promulgating these revelations, but in the centuries following the Reformation the Jesuits devoted themselves with even more keenness and vigour to the same task. Some curious questions incidentally arose. It was mooted among the orthodox authorities whether the damage done by storms should or should not be assessed upon the property of convicted witches. The theologians inclined decidedly to the affirmative; the jurists, on the whole, to the negative.[252]

[252] For proofs of the vigour of the Jesuits in this persecution, see not only the histories of witchcraft, but also the Annuae litterae of the Jesuits themselves, passim.

In spite of these tortures, lightning and tempests continued, and great men arose in the Church throughout Europe in every generation to point out new cruelties for the discovery of “weather-makers,” and new methods for bringing their machinations to naught.

But here and there, as early as the sixteenth century, we begin to see thinkers endeavouring to modify or oppose these methods. At that time Paracelsus called attention to the reverberation of cannon as explaining the rolling of thunder, but he was confronted by one of his greatest contemporaries. Jean Bodin, as superstitious in natural as he was rational in political science, made sport of the scientific theory, and declared thunder to be “a flaming exhalation set in motion by evil spirits, and hurled downward with a great crash and a horrible smell of sulphur.” In support of this view, he dwelt upon the confessions of tortured witches, upon the acknowledged agency of demons in the Will-o’-the-wisp, and specially upon the passage in the one hundred and fourth Psalm, “Who maketh his angels spirits, his ministers a flaming fire.”

To resist such powerful arguments by such powerful men was dangerous indeed. In 1513, Pomponatius, professor at Padua, published a volume of Doubts as to the Fourth Book of Aristotle’s Meteorologica, and also dared to question this power of devils; but he soon found it advisable to explain that, while as a PHILOSOPHER he might doubt, yet as a CHRISTIAN he of course believed everything taught by Mother Church–devils and all–and so escaped the fate of several others who dared to question the agency of witches in atmospheric and other disturbances.

A few years later Agrippa of Nettesheim made a somewhat similar effort to breast this theological tide in northern Europe. He had won a great reputation in various fields, but especially in natural science, as science was then understood. Seeing the folly and cruelty of the prevailing theory, he attempted to modify it, and in 1518, as Syndic of Metz, endeavoured to save a poor woman on trial for witchcraft. But the chief inquisitor, backed by the sacred Scriptures, the papal bulls, the theological faculties, and the monks, was too strong for him; he was not only forced to give up his office, but for this and other offences of a similar sort was imprisoned, driven from city to city and from country to country, and after his death his clerical enemies, especially the Dominicans, pursued his memory with calumny, and placed over his grave probably the most malignant epitaph ever written.

As to argument, these efforts were met especially by Jean Bodin in his famous book, the Demonomanie des Sorciers, published in 1580. It was a work of great power by a man justly considered the leading thinker in France, and perhaps in Europe. All the learning of the time, divine and human, he marshalled in support of the prevailing theory. With inexorable logic he showed that both the veracity of sacred Scripture and the infallibility of a long line of popes and councils of the Church were pledged to it, and in an eloquent passage this great publicist warned rulers and judges against any mercy to witches–citing the example of King Ahab condemned by the prophet to die for having pardoned a man worthy of death, and pointing significantly to King Charles IX of France, who, having pardoned a sorcerer, died soon afterward.[253]

[253] To the argument cited above, Bodin adds: “Id certissimam daemonis praesentiam significat; nam ubicunque daemones cum hominibus nefaria societatis fide copulantur, foedissimum semper relinquunt sulphuris odorem, quod sortilegi saepissime experiuntur et confitentur.” See Bodin’s Universae Naturae Theatrum, Frankfort, 1597, pp. 208-211. The first edition of the book by Pomponatius, which was the earliest of his writings, is excessively rare, but it was reprinted at Venice just a half- century later. It is in his De incantationibus, however, that he speaks especially of devils. As to Pomponatius, see, besides these, Creighton’s History of the Papacy during the Reformation, and an excellent essay in Franck’s Moralistes et Philosophes. For Agrippa, see his biography by Prof. Henry Morley, London, 1856. For Bodin, see a statement of his general line of argument in Lecky, Rationalism in Europe, vol. i, chap. 1.

In the last years of the sixteenth century the persecutions for witchcraft and magic were therefore especially cruel; and in the western districts of Germany the main instrument in them was Binsfeld, Suffragan Bishop of Treves.

At that time Cornelius Loos was a professor at the university of that city. He was a devoted churchman, and one of the most brilliant opponents of Protestantism, but he finally saw through the prevailing belief regarding occult powers, and in an evil hour for himself embodied his idea in a book entitled True and False Magic. The book, though earnest, was temperate, but this helped him and his cause not at all. The texts of Scripture clearly sanctioning belief in sorcery and magic stood against him, and these had been confirmed by the infallible teachings of the Church and the popes from time immemorial; the book was stopped in the press, the manuscript confiscated, and Loos thrown into a dungeon.

The inquisitors having wrought their will upon him, in the spring of 1593 he was brought out of prison, forced to recant on his knees before the assembled dignitaries of the Church, and thenceforward kept constantly under surveillance and at times in prison. Even this was considered too light a punishment, and his arch-enemy, the Jesuit Delrio, declared that, but for his death by the plague, he would have been finally sent to the stake.[254]

[254] What remains of the manuscript of Loos, which until recently was supposed to be lost, was found, hidden away on the shelves of the old Jesuit library at Treves, by Mr. George Lincoln Burr, now a professor at Cornell University; and Prof. Burr’s copy of the manuscript is now in the library of that institution. For a full account of the discovery and its significance, see the New York Nation for November 11, 1886. The facts regarding the after-life of Loos were discovered by Prof. Burr in manuscript records at Brussels.

That this threat was not unmeaning had been seen a few years earlier in a case even more noted, and in the same city. During the last decades of the sixteenth century, Dietrich Flade, an eminent jurist, was rector of the University of Treves, and chief judge of the Electoral Court, and in the latter capacity he had to pass judgment upon persons tried on the capital charge of magic and witchcraft. For a time he yielded to the long line of authorities, ecclesiastical and judicial, supporting the reality of this crime; but he at last seems to have realized that it was unreal, and that the confessions in his torture chamber, of compacts with Satan, riding on broomsticks to the witch-sabbath, raising tempests, producing diseases, and the like, were either the results of madness or of willingness to confess anything and everything, and even to die, in order to shorten the fearful tortures to which the accused were in all cases subjected until a satisfactory confession was obtained.

On this conviction of the unreality of many at least of the charges Flade seems to have acted, and he at once received his reward. He was arrested by the authority of the archbishop and charged with having sold himself to Satan–the fact of his hesitation in the persecution being perhaps what suggested his guilt. He was now, in his turn, brought into the torture chamber over which he had once presided, was racked until he confessed everything which his torturers suggested, and finally, in 1589, was strangled and burnt.

Of that trial a record exists in the library of Cornell University in the shape of the original minutes of the case, and among them the depositions of Flade when under torture, taken down from his own lips in the torture chamber. In these depositions this revered and venerable scholar and jurist acknowledged the truth of every absurd charge brought against him–anything, everything, which would end the fearful torture: compared with that, death was nothing.[255]

[255] For the case of Flade, see the careful study by Prof. Burr, The Fate of Dietrich Flade, in the Papers of the American Historical Association, 1891.

Nor was even a priest secure who ventured to reveal the unreality of magic. When Friedrich Spee, the Jesuit poet of western Germany, found, in taking the confessions of those about to be executed for magic, that without exception, just when about to enter eternity and utterly beyond hope of pardon, they all retracted their confessions made under torture, his sympathies as a man rose above his loyalty to his order, and he published his Cautio Criminalis as a warning, stating with entire moderation the facts he had observed and the necessity of care. But he did not dare publish it under his own name, nor did he even dare publish it in a Catholic town; he gave it to the world anonymously, and, in order to prevent any tracing of the work to him through the confessional, he secretly caused it to be published in the Protestant town of Rinteln.

Nor was this all. Nothing shows so thoroughly the hold that this belief in magic had obtained as the conduct of Spee’s powerful friend and contemporary, John Philip von Schonborn, later the Elector and Prince Archbishop of Mayence.

As a youth, Schonborn had loved and admired Spee, and had especially noted his persistent melancholy and his hair whitened even in his young manhood. On Schonborn’s pressing him for the cause, Spee at last confessed that his sadness, whitened hair, and premature old age were due to his recollections of the scores of men and women and children whom he had been obliged to see tortured and sent to the scaffold and stake for magic and witchcraft, when he as their father confessor positively knew them to be innocent. The result was that, when Schonborn became Elector and Archbishop of Mayence, he stopped the witch persecutions in that province, and prevented them as long as he lived. But here was shown the strength of theological and ecclesiastical traditions and precedents. Even a man so strong by family connections, and enjoying such great temporal and spiritual power as Schonborn, dared not openly give his reasons for this change of policy. So far as is known, he never uttered a word publicly against the reality of magic, and under his successor in the electorate witch trials were resumed.

The great upholders of the orthodox view retained full possession of the field. The victorious Bishop Binsfeld, of Treves, wrote a book to prove that everything confessed by the witches under torture, especially the raising of storms and the general controlling of the weather, was worthy of belief; and this book became throughout Europe a standard authority, both among Catholics and Protestants. Even more inflexible was Remigius, criminal judge in Lorraine. On the title-page of his manual he boasts that within fifteen years he had sent nine hundred persons to death for this imaginary crime.[256]

[256] For Spee and Schonborn, see Soldan and other German authorities. There are copies of the first editions of the Cautio Criminalis in the library of Cornell University. Binsfeld’s book bore the title of Tractatus de confessionibus maleficorum et sagarum. First published at Treves in 1589, it appeared subsequently four times in the original Latin, as well as in two distinct German translations, and in a French one. Remigius’s manual was entitled Daemonolatreia, and was first printed at Lyons in 1595.

Protestantism fell into the superstition as fully as Catholicism. In the same century John Wier, a disciple of Agrippa, tried to frame a pious theory which, while satisfying orthodoxy, should do something to check the frightful cruelties around him. In his book De Praestigiis Daemonum, published in 1563, he proclaimed his belief in witchcraft, but suggested that the compacts with Satan, journeys through the air on broomsticks, bearing children to Satan, raising storms and producing diseases–to which so many women and children confessed under torture–were delusions suggested and propagated by Satan himself, and that the persons charged with witchcraft were therefore to be considered “as possessed”–that is, rather as sinned against than sinning.[257]

[257] For Wier, or Weyer,s ee, besides his own works, the excellent biography by Prof. Binz, of Bonn.

But neither Catholics nor Protestants would listen for a moment to any such suggestion. Wier was bitterly denounced and persecuted. Nor did Bekker, a Protestant divine in Holland, fare any better in the following century. For his World Bewitched, in which he ventured not only to question the devil’s power over the weather, but to deny his bodily existence altogether, he was solemnly tried by the synod of his Church and expelled from his pulpit, while his views were condemned as heresy, and overwhelmed with a flood of refutations whose mere catalogue would fill pages; and these cases were typical of many.

The Reformation had, indeed, at first deepened the superstition; the new Church being anxious to show itself equally orthodox and zealous with the old. During the century following the first great movement, the eminent Lutheran jurist and theologian Benedict Carpzov, whose boast was that he had read the Bible fifty-three times, especially distinguished himself by his skill in demonstrating the reality of witchcraft, and by his cruelty in detecting and punishing it. The torture chambers were set at work more vigorously than ever, and a long line of theological jurists followed to maintain the system and to extend it.

To argue against it, or even doubt it, was exceedingly dangerous. Even as late as the beginning of the eighteenth century, when Christian Thomasius, the greatest and bravest German between Luther and Lessing, began the efforts which put an end to it in Protestant Germany, he did not dare at first, bold as he was, to attack it in his own name, but presented his views as the university thesis of an irresponsible student.[258]

[258] For Thomasius, see his various bigraphies by Luden and others; also the treatises on witchcraft by Soldan and others. Manuscript notes of his lectures, and copies of his earliest books on witchcraft as well as on other forms of folly, are to be found in the library of Cornell University.

The same stubborn resistance to the gradual encroachment of the scientific spirit upon the orthodox doctrine of witchcraft was seen in Great Britain. Typical as to the attitude both of Scotch and English Protestants were the theory and practice of King James I, himself the author of a book on Demonology, and nothing if not a theologian. As to theory, his treatise on Demonology supported the worst features of the superstition; as to practice, he ordered the learned and acute work of Reginald Scot, The Discoverie of Witchcraft, one of the best treatises ever written on the subject, to be burned by the hangman, and he applied his own knowledge to investigating the causes of the tempests which beset his bride on her voyage from Denmark. Skilful use of unlimited torture soon brought these causes to light. A Dr. Fian, while his legs were crushed in the “boots” and wedges were driven under his finger nails, confessed that several hundred witches had gone to sea in a sieve from the port of Leith, and had raised storms and tempests to drive back the princess.

With the coming in of the Puritans the persecution was even more largely, systematically, and cruelly developed. The great witch-finder, Matthew Hopkins, having gone through the county of Suffolk and tested multitudes of poor old women by piercing them with pins and needles, declared that county to be infested with witches. Thereupon Parliament issued a commission, and sent two eminent Presbyterian divines to accompany it, with the result that in that county alone sixty persons were hanged for witchcraft in a single year. In Scotland matters were even worse. The auto da fe of Spain was celebrated in Scotland under another name, and with Presbyterian ministers instead of Roman Catholic priests as the main attendants. At Leith, in 1664, nine women were burned together. Condemnations and punishments of women in batches were not uncommon. Torture was used far more freely than in England, both in detecting witches and in punishing them. The natural argument developed in hundreds of pulpits was this: If the Allwise God punishes his creatures with tortures infinite in cruelty and duration, why should not his ministers, as far as they can, imitate him?

The strongest minds in both branches of the Protestant Church in Great Britain devoted themselves to maintaining the superstition. The newer scientific modes of thought, and especially the new ideas regarding the heavens, revealed first by Copernicus and Galileo and later by Newton, Huygens, and Halley, were gradually dissipating the whole domain of the Prince of the Power of the Air; but from first to last a long line of eminent divines, Anglican and Calvinistic, strove to resist the new thought. On the Anglican side, in the seventeenth century, Meric Casaubon, Doctor of Divinity and a high dignitary of Canterbury,–Henry More, in many respects the most eminent scholar in the Church,–Cudworth, by far the most eminent philosopher, and Dr. Joseph Glanvil, the most cogent of all writers in favour of witchcraft, supported the orthodox superstition in treatises of great power; and Sir Matthew Hale, the greatest jurist of the period, condemning two women to be burned for witchcraft, declared that he based his judgment on the direct testimony of Holy Scripture. On the Calvinistic side were the great names of Richard Baxter, who applauded some of the worst cruelties in England, and of Increase and Cotton Mather, who stimulated the worst in America; and these marshalled in behalf of this cruel superstition a long line of eminent divines, the most earnest of all, perhaps, being John Wesley.

Nor was the Lutheran Church in Sweden and the other Scandinavian countries behind its sister churches, either in persecuting witchcraft or in repressing doubts regarding the doctrine which supported it.

But in spite of all these great authorities in every land, in spite of such summary punishments as those of Flade, Loos, and Bekker, and in spite of the virtual exclusion from church preferment of all who doubted the old doctrine, the new scientific view of the heavens was developed more and more; the physical sciences were more and more cultivated; the new scientific atmosphere in general more and more prevailed; and at the end of the seventeenth century this vast growth of superstition began to wither and droop. Montaigne, Bayle, and Voltaire in France, Thomasius in Germany, Calef in New England, and Beccaria in Italy, did much also to create an intellectual and moral atmosphere fatal to it.

And here it should be stated, to the honour of the Church of England, that several of her divines showed great courage in opposing the dominant doctrine. Such men as Harsnet, Archbishop of York, and Morton, Bishop of Lichfield, who threw all their influence against witch-finding cruelties even early in the seventeenth century, deserve lasting gratitude. But especially should honour be paid to the younger men in the Church, who wrote at length against the whole system: such men as Wagstaffe and Webster and Hutchinson, who in the humbler ranks of the clergy stood manfully for truth, with the certainty that by so doing they were making their own promotion impossible.

By the beginning of the eighteenth century the doctrine was evidently dying out. Where torture had been abolished, or even made milder, “weather-makers” no longer confessed, and the fundamental proofs in which the system was rooted were evidently slipping away. Even the great theologian Fromundus, at the University of Louvain, the oracle of his age, who had demonstrated the futility of the Copernican theory, had foreseen this and made the inevitable attempt at compromise, declaring that devils, though OFTEN, are not ALWAYS or even for the most part the causes of thunder. The learned Jesuit Caspar Schott, whose Physica Curiosa was one of the most popular books of the seventeenth century, also ventured to make the same mild statement. But even such concessions by such great champions of orthodoxy did not prevent frantic efforts in various quarters to bring the world back under the old dogma: as late as 1743 there was published in Catholic Germany a manual by Father Vincent of Berg, in which the superstition was taught to its fullest extent, with the declaration that it was issued for the use of priests under the express sanction of the theological professors of the University of Cologne; and twenty-five years later, in 1768, we find in Protestant England John Wesley standing firmly for witchcraft, and uttering his famous declaration, “The giving up of witchcraft is in effect the giving up of the Bible.” The latest notable demonstration in Scotland was made as late as 1773, when “the divines of the Associated Presbytery” passed a resolution declaring their belief in witchcraft, and deploring the general scepticism regarding it.[259]

[259] For Carpzov and his successors, see authorities already given. The best account of James’s share in the extortion of confessions may be found in the collection of Curious Tracts published at Edinburgh in 1820. See also King James’s own Demonologie, and Pitcairn’s Criminal Trials of Scotland, vol. i, part ii, pp. 213-223. For Casaubon, see his Credulity and Incredulity in Things Natural, pp. 66, 67. For Glanvil, More, Casaubon, Baxter, Wesley, and others named, see Lecky, as above. As to Increase Mather, in his sermons, already cited, on The Voice of God in Stormy Winds, Boston, 1704, he says: “when there are great tempests, the Angels oftentimes have a Hand therein. . . . Yea, and sometimes, by Divine Permission, Evil Angels have a Hand in such Storms and Tempests as are very hurtful to Men on the Earth.” Yet “for the most part, such Storms are sent by the Providence of God as a Sign of His Displeasure for the Sins of Men,” and sometimes “as Prognosticks and terrible Warnings of Great Judgements not far off.” From the height of his erudition Mather thus rebukes the timid voice of scientific scepticism: “There are some who would be esteemed the Wits of the World, that ridicule those as Superstitious and Weak Persons, which look upon Dreadful Tempests as Prodromous of other Judgements. Nevertheless, the most Learned and Judicious Writers, not only of the Gentiles, but amongst Christians, have Embraced such a Persuasion; their Sentiments therein being Confirmed by the Experience of many Ages.” For another curious turn given to this theory, with reference to sanitary science, see Deodat Lawson’s famous sermon at Salem, in 1692, on Christ’s Fidelity a Shield against Satan’s Malignity, p. 21 of the second edition. For Cotton Mather, see his biography by Barrett Wendell, pp. 91, 92; also the chapter on Diabolism and Hysteria in this work. For Fromundus, see his Meteorologica (London, 1656), lib. iii, c. 9, and lib. ii, c. 3. For Schott, see his Physica Curiosa (edition of Wurzburg, 1667), p. 1249. For Father Vincent of Berg, see his Enchiridium quadripartitum (Cologne, 1743). Besides benedictions and exorcisms for all emergencies, it contains full directions for the manufacture of Agnes Dei, and of another sacred panacea called “Heiligthum,” not less effective against evil powers,– gives formulae to be worn for protection against the devil,– suggests a list of signs by which diabolical possession may be recognised, and prescribes the question to be asked by priests in the examination of witches. For Wesley, see his Journal for 1768. The whole citation is given in Lecky.

IV. FRANKLIN’S LIGHTNING-ROD.

But in the midst of these efforts by Catholics like Father Vincent and by Protestants like John Wesley to save the old sacred theory, it received its death-blow. In 1752 Franklin made his experiments with the kite on the banks of the Schuylkill; and, at the moment when he drew the electric spark from the cloud, the whole tremendous fabric of theological meteorology reared by the fathers, the popes, the medieval doctors, and the long line of great theologians, Catholic and Protestant, collapsed; the “Prince of the Power of the Air” tumbled from his seat; the great doctrine which had so long afflicted the earth was prostrated forever.

The experiment of Franklin was repeated in various parts of Europe, but, at first, the Church seemed careful to take no notice of it. The old church formulas against the Prince of the Power of the Air were still used, but the theological theory, especially in the Protestant Church, began to grow milder. Four years after Franklin’s discovery Pastor Karl Koken, member of the Consistory and official preacher to the City Council of Hildesheim, was moved by a great hailstorm to preach and publish a sermon on The Revelation of God in Weather. Of “the Prince of the Power of the Air” he says nothing; the theory of diabolical agency he throws overboard altogether; his whole attempt is to save the older and more harmless theory, that the storm is the voice of God. He insists that, since Christ told Nicodemus that men “know not whence the wind cometh,” it can not be of mere natural origin, but is sent directly by God himself, as David intimates in the Psalm, “out of His secret places.” As to the hailstorm, he lays great stress upon the plague of hail sent by the Almighty upon Egypt, and clinches all by insisting that God showed at Mount Sinai his purpose to startle the body before impressing the conscience.

While the theory of diabolical agency in storms was thus drooping and dying, very shrewd efforts were made at compromise. The first of these attempts we have already noted, in the effort to explain the efficacy of bells in storms by their simple use in stirring the faithful to prayer, and in the concession made by sundry theologians, and even by the great Lord Bacon himself, that church bells might, under the sanction of Providence, disperse storms by agitating the air. This gained ground somewhat, though it was resisted by one eminent Church authority, who answered shrewdly that, in that case, cannon would be even more pious instruments. Still another argument used in trying to save this part of the theological theory was that the bells were consecrated instruments for this purpose, “like the horns at whose blowing the walls of Jericho fell.”[260]

[260] For Koken, see his Offenbarung Gottes in Wetter, Hildesheim, c1756; and for the answer to Bacon, see Gretser’s De Benedictionibus, lib. ii, cap. 46.

But these compromises were of little avail. In 1766 Father Sterzinger attacked the very groundwork of the whole diabolic theory. He was, of course, bitterly assailed, insulted, and hated; but the Church thought it best not to condemn him. More and more the “Prince of the Power of the Air” retreated before the lightning-rod of Franklin. The older Church, while clinging to the old theory, was finally obliged to confess the supremacy of Franklin’s theory practically; for his lightning-rod did what exorcisms, and holy water, and processions, and the Agnus Dei, and the ringing of church bells, and the rack, and the burning of witches, had failed to do. This was clearly seen, even by the poorest peasants in eastern France, when they observed that the grand spire of Strasburg Cathedral, which neither the sacredness of the place, nor the bells within it, nor the holy water and relics beneath it, could protect from frequent injuries by lightning, was once and for all protected by Franklin’s rod. Then came into the minds of multitudes the answer to the question which had so long exercised the leading theologians of Europe and America, namely, “Why should the Almighty strike his own consecrated temples, or suffer Satan to strike them? “

Yet even this practical solution of the question was not received without opposition.

In America the earthquake of 1755 was widely ascribed, especially in Massachusetts, to Franklin’s rod. The Rev. Thomas Prince, pastor of the Old South Church, published a sermon on the subject, and in the appendix expressed the opinion that the frequency of earthquakes may be due to the erection of “iron points invented by the sagacious Mr. Franklin.” He goes on to argue that “in Boston are more erected than anywhere else in New England, and Boston seems to be more dreadfully shaken. Oh! there is no getting out of the mighty hand of God.”

Three years later, John Adams, speaking of a conversation with Arbuthnot, a Boston physician, says: “He began to prate upon the presumption of philosophy in erecting iron rods to draw the lightning from the clouds. He railed and foamed against the points and the presumption that erected them. He talked of presuming upon God, as Peter attempted to walk upon the water, and of attempting to control the artillery of heaven.”

As late as 1770 religious scruples regarding lightning-rods were still felt, the theory being that, as thunder and lightning were tokens of the Divine displeasure, it was impiety to prevent their doing their full work. Fortunately, Prof. John Winthrop, of Harvard, showed himself wise in this, as in so many other things: in a lecture on earthquakes he opposed the dominant theology; and as to arguments against Franklin’s rods, he declared, “It is as much our duty to secure ourselves against the effects of lightning as against those of rain, snow, and wind by the means God has put into our hands.”

Still, for some years theological sentiment had to be regarded carefully. In Philadelphia, a popular lecturer on science for some time after Franklin’s discovery thought it best in advertising his lectures to explain that “the erection of lightning-rods is not chargeable with presumption nor inconsistent with any of the principles either of natural or revealed religion.”[261]

[261] Regarding opposition to Franklin’s rods in America, see Prince’s sermon, especially p. 23; also Quincy, History of Harvard University, vol. ii, p. 219; also Works of John Adams, vol. ii, pp. 51, 52; also Parton’s Life of Franklin, vol. i, p. 294.

In England, the first lightning conductor upon a church was not put up until 1762, ten years after Franklin’s discovery. The spire of St. Bride’s Church in London was greatly injured by lightning in 1750, and in 1764 a storm so wrecked its masonry that it had to be mainly rebuilt; yet for years after this the authorities refused to attach a lightning-rod. The Protestant Cathedral of St. Paul’s, in London, was not protected until sixteen years after Franklin’s discovery, and the tower of the great Protestant church at Hamburg not until a year later still. As late as 1783 it was declared in Germany, on excellent authority, that within a space of thirty-three years nearly four hundred towers had been damaged and one hundred and twenty bell-ringers killed.

In Roman Catholic countries a similar prejudice was shown, and its cost at times was heavy. In Austria, the church of Rosenberg, in the mountains of Carinthia, was struck so frequently and with such loss of life that the peasants feared at last to attend service. Three times was the spire rebuilt, and it was not until 1778–twenty-six years after Franklin’s discovery–that the authorities permitted a rod to be attached. Then all trouble ceased.

A typical case in Italy was that of the tower of St. Mark’s, at Venice. In spite of the angel at its summit and the bells consecrated to ward off the powers of the air, and the relics in the cathedral hard by, and the processions in the adjacent square, the tower was frequently injured and even ruined by lightning. In 1388 it was badly shattered; in 1417, and again in 1489, the wooden spire surmounting it was utterly consumed; it was again greatly injured in 1548, 1565, 1653, and in 1745 was struck so powerfully that the whole tower, which had been rebuilt of stone and brick, was shattered in thirty-seven places. Although the invention of Franklin had been introduced into Italy by the physicist Beccaria, the tower of St. Mark’s still went unprotected, and was again badly struck in 1761 and 1762; and not until 1766–fourteen years after Franklin’s discovery–was a lightning-rod placed upon it; and it has never been struck since.[262]

[262] For reluctance in England to protect churches with Franklin’s rods, see Priestley, History of Electricity, London, 1775, vol. i, pp. 407, 465 et seq.

So, too, though the beautiful tower of the Cathedral of Siena, protected by all possible theological means, had been struck again and again, much opposition was shown to placing upon it what was generally known as “the heretical rod,” but the tower was at last protected by Franklin’s invention, and in 1777, though a very heavy bolt passed down the rod, the church received not the slightest injury. This served to reconcile theology and science, so far as that city was concerned; but the case which did most to convert the Italian theologians to the scientific view was that of the church of San Nazaro, at Brescia. The Republic of Venice had stored in the vaults of this church over two hundred thousand pounds of powder. In 1767, seventeen years after Franklin’s discovery, no rod having been placed upon it, it was struck by lightning, the powder in the vaults was exploded, one sixth of the entire city destroyed, and over three thousand lives were lost.[263]

[263] See article on Lightning in the Edinburgh Review for October, 1844.

Such examples as these, in all parts of Europe, had their effect. The formulas for conjuring off storms, for consecrating bells to ward off lightning and tempests, and for putting to flight the powers of the air, were still allowed to stand in the liturgies; but the lightning-rod, the barometer, and the thermometer, carried the day. A vigorous line of investigators succeeding Franklin completed his victory, The traveller in remote districts of Europe still hears the church bells ringing during tempests; the Polish or Italian peasant is still persuaded to pay fees for sounding bells to keep off hailstorms; but the universal tendency favours more and more the use of the lightning-rod, and of the insurance offices where men can be relieved of the ruinous results of meteorological disturbances in accordance with the scientific laws of average, based upon the ascertained recurrence of storms. So, too, though many a poor seaman trusts to his charm that has been bathed in holy water, or that has touched some relic, the tendency among mariners is to value more and more those warnings which are sent far and wide each day over the earth and under the sea by the electric wires in accordance with laws ascertained by observation.

Yet, even in our own time, attempts to revive the old theological doctrine of meteorology have not been wanting. Two of these, one in a Roman Catholic and another in a Protestant country, will serve as types of many, to show how completely scientific truth has saturated and permeated minds supposed to be entirely surrendered to the theological view.

The Island of St. Honorat, just off the southern coast of France, is deservedly one of the places most venerated in Christendom. The monastery of Lerins, founded there in the fourth century, became a mother of similar institutions in western Europe, and a centre of religious teaching for the Christian world. In its atmosphere, legends and myths grew in beauty and luxuriance. Here, as the chroniclers tell us, at the touch of St. Honorat, burst forth a stream of living water, which a recent historian of the monastery declares a greater miracle than that of Moses; here he destroyed, with a touch of his staff, the reptiles which infested the island, and then forced the sea to wash away their foul remains. Here, to please his sister, Sainte-Marguerite, a cherry tree burst into full bloom every month; here he threw his cloak upon the waters and it became a raft, which bore him safely to visit the neighbouring island; here St. Patrick received from St. Just the staff with which he imitated St. Honorat by driving all reptiles from Ireland. Pillaged by Saracens and pirates, the island was made all the more precious by the blood of Christian martyrs. Popes and kings made pilgrimages to it; saints, confessors, and bishops went forth from it into all Europe; in one of its cells St. Vincent of Lerins wrote that famous definition of pure religion which, for nearly fifteen hundred years, has virtually superseded that of St. James. Naturally the monastery became most illustrious, and its seat “the Mediterranean Isle of Saints.”

But toward the close of the last century, its inmates having become slothful and corrupt, it was dismantled, all save a small portion torn down, and the island became the property first of impiety, embodied in a French actress, and finally of heresy, embodied in an English clergyman.

Bought back for the Church by the Bishop of Frejus in 1859, there was little revival of life for twelve years. Then came the reaction, religious and political, after the humiliation of France and the Vatican by Germany; and of this reaction the monastery of St. Honorat was made one of the most striking outward and visible signs. Pius IX interested himself directly in it, called into it a body of Cistercian monks, and it became the chief seat of their order in France. To restore its sacredness the strict system of La Trappe was established–labour, silence, meditation on death. The word thus given from Rome was seconded in France by cardinals, archbishops, and all churchmen especially anxious for promotion in this world or salvation in the next. Worn-out dukes and duchesses of the Faubourg Saint-Germain united in this enterprise of pious reaction with the frivolous youngsters, the petits creves, who haunt the purlieus of Notre Dame de Lorette. The great church of the monastery was handsomely rebuilt and a multitude of altars erected; and beautiful frescoes and stained windows came from the leaders of the reaction. The whole effect was, perhaps, somewhat theatrical and thin, but it showed none the less earnestness in making the old “Isle of Saints” a protest against the hated modern world.

As if to bid defiance still further to modern liberalism, great store of relics was sent in; among these, pieces of the true cross, of the white and purple robes, of the crown of thorns, sponge, lance, and winding-sheet of Christ,–the hair, robe, veil, and girdle of the Blessed Virgin; relics of St. John the Baptist, St. Joseph, St. Mary Magdalene, St. Paul, St. Barnabas, the four evangelists, and a multitude of other saints: so many that the bare mention of these treasures requires twenty-four distinct heads in the official catalogue recently published at the monastery. Besides all this–what was considered even more powerful in warding off harm from the revived monastery–the bones of Christian martyrs were brought from the Roman catacombs and laid beneath the altars.[264]

[264] See the Guide des Visiteurs a Lerins, published at the Monastery in 1880, p. 204; also the Histoire de Lerins, mentioned below.

All was thus conformed to the medieval view; nothing was to be left which could remind one of the nineteenth century; the “ages of faith” were to be restored in their simplicity. Pope Leo XIII commended to the brethren the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas as their one great object of study, and works published at the monastery dwelt upon the miracles of St. Honorat as the most precious refutation of modern science.

High in the cupola, above the altars and relics, were placed the bells. Sent by pious donors, they were solemnly baptized and consecrated in 1871, four bishops officiating, a multitude of the faithful being present from all parts of Europe, and the sponsors of the great tenor bell being the Bourbon claimant to the ducal throne of Parma and his duchess. The good bishop who baptized the bells consecrated them with a formula announcing their efficacy in driving away the “Prince of the Power of the Air” and the lightning and tempests he provokes.

And then, above all, at the summit of the central spire, high above relics, altars, and bells, was placed–A LIGHTNING-ROD![265]

[265] See Guide, as above, p. 84. Les Isles de Lerins, by the Abbe Alliez (Paris, 1860), and the Histoire de Lerins, by the same author, are the authorities for the general history of the abbey, and are especially strong in presenting the miracles of St. Honorat, etc. The Cartulaire of the monastery, recently published, is also valuable. But these do not cover the recent revival, for an account of which recourse must be had to the very interesting and naive Guide already cited.

The account of the monastery, published under the direction of the present worthy abbot, more than hints at the saving, by its bells, of a ship which was wrecked a few years since on that coast; and yet, to protect the bells and church and monks and relics from the very foe whom, in the medieval faith, all these were thought most powerful to drive away, recourse was had to the scientific discovery of that “arch-infidel,” Benjamin Franklin!

Perhaps the most striking recent example in Protestant lands of this change from the old to the new occurred not long since in one of the great Pacific dependencies of the British crown. At a time of severe drought an appeal was made to the bishop, Dr. Moorhouse, to order public prayers for rain. The bishop refused, advising the petitioners for the future to take better care of their water supply, virtually telling them, “Heaven helps those who help themselves.” But most noteworthy in this matter was it that the English Government, not long after, scanning the horizon to find some man to take up the good work laid down by the lamented Bishop Fraser, of Manchester, chose Dr. Moorhouse; and his utterance upon meteorology, which a few generations since would have been regarded by the whole Church as blasphemy, was universally alluded to as an example of strong good sense, proving him especially fit for one of the most important bishoprics in England.

Throughout Christendom, the prevalence of the conviction that meteorology is obedient to laws is more and more evident. In cities especially, where men are accustomed each day to see posted in public places charts which show the storms moving over various parts of the country, and to read in the morning papers scientific prophecies as to the weather, the old view can hardly be very influential.

Significant of this was the feeling of the American people during the fearful droughts a few years since in the States west of the Missouri. No days were appointed for fasting and prayer to bring rain; there was no attribution of the calamity to the wrath of God or the malice of Satan; but much was said regarding the folly of our people in allowing the upper regions of their vast rivers to be denuded of forests, thus subjecting the States below to alternations of drought and deluge. Partly as a result of this, a beginning has been made of teaching forest culture in many schools, tree-planting societies have been formed, and “Arbor Day” is recognised in several of the States. A true and noble theology can hardly fail to recognise, in the love of Nature and care for our fellow-men thus promoted, something far better, both from a religious and a moral point of view, than any efforts to win the Divine favour by flattery, or to avert Satanic malice by fetichism.

CHAPTER XII.

FROM MAGIC TO CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS.

I.

In all the earliest developments of human thought we find a strong tendency to ascribe mysterious powers over Nature to men and women especially gifted or skilled. Survivals of this view are found to this day among savages and barbarians left behind in the evolution of civilization, and especially is this the case among the tribes of Australia, Africa, and the Pacific coast of America. Even in the most enlightened nations still appear popular beliefs, observances, or sayings, drawn from this earlier phase of thought.

Between the prehistoric savage developing this theory, and therefore endeavouring to deal with the powers of Nature by magic, and the modern man who has outgrown it, appears a long line of nations struggling upward through it. As the hieroglyphs, cuneiform inscriptions, and various other records of antiquity are read, the development of this belief can be studied in Egypt, India, Babylonia, Assyria, Persia, and Phoenicia. From these civilizations it came into the early thought of Greece and Rome, but especially into the Jewish and Christian sacred books. Both in the Old Testament and in the New we find magic, witchcraft, and soothsaying constantly referred to as realities.[266]

[266] For magic in prehistoric times and survivals of it since, with abundant citation of authorities, see Tylor, Primitive Culture, chap. iv; also The Early History of Mankind, by the same author, third edition, pp. 115 et seq., also p. 380.; also Andrew Lang, Myth, Ritual, and Religion, vol. i, chap iv. For magic in Egypt, see Lenormant, Chaldean Magic, chaps. vi-viii; also Maspero, Histoire Ancienne des Peuples de l’Orient; also Maspero and Sayce, The Dawn of Civilization, p. 282, and for the threat of magicians to wreck heaven, see ibid, p. 17, note, and especially the citations from Chabas, Le Papyrus Magique Harris, in chap. vii; also Maury, La Magie et l’Astrologie dans l’Antiquite et au Moyen Age. For magic in Chaldea, see Lenormant as above; also Maspero and Sayce, pp. 780 et seq. For examples of magical powers in India, see Max Muller’s Sacred Books of the East, vol. xvi, pp. 121 et seq. For a legendary view of magic in Media, see the Zend Avesta, part i, p. 14, translated by Darmsteter; and for a more highly developed view, see the Zend Avesta, part iii, p. 239, translated by Mill. For magic in Greece and Rome, and especially in the Neoplatonic school, as well as in the Middle Ages, see especially Maury, La Magie et l’Astrologie, chaps. iii-v. For various sorts of magic recognised and condemned in our sacred books, see Deuteronomy xviii, 10, 11; and for the burning of magical books at Ephesus under the influence of St. Paul, see Acts xix, 14. See also Ewald, History of Israel, Martineau’s translation, fourth edition, vol. iii, pp. 45-51. For a very elaborate summing up of the passages in our sacred books recognizing magic as a fact, see De Haen, De Magia, Leipsic, 1775, chaps. i, ii, and iii, of the first part. For the general subject of magic, see Ennemoser, History of Magic, translated by Howitt, which, however, constantly mixes sorcery with magic proper.

The first distinct impulse toward a higher view of research into natural laws was given by the philosophers of Greece. It is true that philosophical opposition to physical research was at times strong, and that even a great thinker like Socrates considered certain physical investigations as an impious intrusion into the work of the gods. It is also true that Plato and Aristotle, while bringing their thoughts to bear upon the world with great beauty and force, did much to draw mankind away from those methods which in modern times have produced the best results.

Plato developed a world in which the physical sciences had little if any real reason for existing; Aristotle, a world in which the same sciences were developed largely indeed by observation of what is, but still more by speculation on what ought to be. From the former of these two great men came into Christian theology many germs of medieval magic, and from the latter sundry modes of reasoning which aided in the evolution of these; yet the impulse to human thought given by these great masters was of inestimable value to our race, and one legacy from them was especially precious–the idea that a science of Nature is possible, and that the highest occupation of man is the discovery of its laws. Still another gift from them was greatest of all, for they gave scientific freedom. They laid no interdict upon new paths; they interposed no barriers to the extension of knowledge; they threatened no doom in this life or in the next against investigators on new lines; they left the world free to seek any new methods and to follow any new paths which thinking men could find.

This legacy of belief in science, of respect for scientific pursuits, and of freedom in scientific research, was especially received by the school of Alexandria, and above all by Archimedes, who began, just before the Christian era, to open new paths through the great field of the inductive sciences by observation, comparison, and experiment.[267]

[267] As to the beginnings of physical science in Greece, and of the theological opposition to physical science, also Socrates’s view regarding certain branches as interdicted to human study, see Grote’s History of Greece, vol. i, pp. 495 and 504, 505; also Jowett’s introduction to his translation of the Timaeus, and Whewell’s History of the Inductive Sciences. For examples showing the incompatibility of Plato’s methods in physical science with that pursued in modern times, see Zeller, Plato and the Older Academy, English translation by Alleyne and Goodwin, pp. 375 et. seq. The supposed opposition to freedom of opinion in the Laws of Plato, toward the end of his life, can hardly make against the whole spirit of Greek thought.

The establishment of Christianity, beginning a new evolution of theology, arrested the normal development of the physical sciences for over fifteen hundred years. The cause of this arrest was twofold: First, there was created an atmosphere in which the germs of physical science could hardly grow–an atmosphere in which all seeking in Nature for truth as truth was regarded as futile. The general belief derived from the New Testament Scriptures was, that the end of the world was at hand; that the last judgment was approaching; that all existing physical nature was soon to be destroyed: hence, the greatest thinkers in the Church generally poured contempt upon all investigators into a science of Nature, and insisted that everything except the saving of souls was folly.

This belief appears frequently through the entire period of the Middle Ages; but during the first thousand years it is clearly dominant. From Lactantius and Eusebius, in the third century, pouring contempt, as we have seen, over studies in astronomy, to Peter Damian, the noted chancellor of Pope Gregory VII, in the eleventh century, declaring all worldly sciences to be “absurdities” and “fooleries,” it becomes a very important element in the atmosphere of thought.[268]

[268] For the view of Peter Damian and others through the Middle Ages as to the futility of scientific investigation, see citations in Eicken, Geschichte und System der mittelalterlichen Weltanschauung, chap. vi.

Then, too, there was established a standard to which all science which did struggle up through this atmosphere must be made to conform–a standard which favoured magic rather than science, for it was a standard of rigid dogmatism obtained from literal readings in the Jewish and Christian Scriptures. The most careful inductions from ascertained facts were regarded as wretchedly fallible when compared with any view of nature whatever given or even hinted at in any poem, chronicle, code, apologue, myth, legend, allegory, letter, or discourse of any sort which had happened to be preserved in the literature which had come to be held as sacred.

For twelve centuries, then, the physical sciences were thus discouraged or perverted by the dominant orthodoxy. Whoever studied nature studied it either openly to find illustrations of the sacred text, useful in the “saving of souls,” or secretly to gain the aid of occult powers, useful in securing personal advantage. Great men like Bede, Isidore of Seville, and Rabanus Maurus, accepted the scriptural standard of science and used it as a means of Christian edification. The views of Bede and Isidore on kindred subjects have been shown in former chapters; and typical of the view taken by Rabanus is the fact that in his great work on the Universe there are only two chapters which seem directly or indirectly to recognise even the beginnings of a real philosophy of nature. A multitude of less-known men found warrant in Scripture for magic applied to less worthy purposes.[269]

[269] As typical examples, see utterances of Eusibius and Lactantius regarding astronomers given in the chapter on Astronomy. For a summary of Rabanus Maurus’s doctrine of physics, see Heller, Geschichte der Physik, vol. i, pp. 172 et seq. For Bede and Isidore, see the earlier chapters of this work. For an excellent statement regarding the application of scriptural standards to scientific research in the Middle Ages, see Kretschemr, Die physische Erdkunde im christlichen Mittelalter, pp. 5 et seq. For the distinctions in magic recognised in the mediaeval Church, see the long catalogue of various sorts given in the Abbe Migne’s Encyclopedie Theologique, third series, article Magic.

But after the thousand years had passed to which various thinkers in the Church, upon supposed scriptural warrant, had lengthened out the term of the earth’s existence, “the end of all things” seemed further off than ever; and in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, owing to causes which need not be dwelt upon here, came a great revival of thought, so that the forces of theology and of science seemed arrayed for a contest. On one side came a revival of religious fervour, and to this day the works of the cathedral builders mark its depth and strength; on the other side came a new spirit of inquiry incarnate in a line of powerful thinkers.

First among these was Albert of Bollstadt, better known as Albert the Great, the most renowned scholar of his time. Fettered though he was by the methods sanctioned in the Church, dark as was all about him, he had conceived better methods and aims; his eye pierced the mists of scholasticism. he saw the light, and sought to draw the world toward it. He stands among the great pioneers of physical and natural science; he aided in giving foundations to botany and chemistry; he rose above his time, and struck a heavy blow at those who opposed the possibility of human life on opposite sides of the earth; he noted the influence of mountains, seas, and forests upon races and products, so that Humboldt justly finds in his works the germs of physical geography as a comprehensive science.

But the old system of deducing scientific truth from scriptural texts was renewed in the development of scholastic theology, and ecclesiastical power, acting through thousands of subtle channels, was made to aid this development. The old idea of the futility of physical science and of the vast superiority of theology was revived. Though Albert’s main effort was to Christianize science, he was dealt with by the authorities of the Dominican order, subjected to suspicion and indignity, and only escaped persecution for sorcery by yielding to the ecclesiastical spirit of the time, and working finally in theological channels by, scholastic methods.

It was a vast loss to the earth; and certainly, of all organizations that have reason to lament the pressure of ecclesiasticism which turned Albert the Great from natural philosophy to theology, foremost of all in regret should be the Christian Church, and especially the Roman branch of it. Had there been evolved in the Church during the thirteenth century a faith strong enough to accept the truths in natural science which Albert and his compeers could have given, and to have encouraged their growth, this faith and this encouragement would to this day have formed the greatest argument for proving the Church directly under Divine guidance; they would have been among the brightest jewels in her crown. The loss to the Church by this want of faith and courage has proved in the long run even greater than the loss to science.[270]

[270] For a very careful discussion of Albert’s strength in investigation and weakness in yielding to scholastic authority, see Kopp, Ansichten uber die Aufgabe der Chemie von Geber bis Stahl, Braunschweig, 1875, pp. 64 et seq. For a very extended and enthusiastic biographical sketch, see Pouchet. For comparison of his work with that of Thomas Aquinas, see Milman, History of Latin Christianity, vol. vi, p. 461. “Il etat aussi tres-habile dans les arts mecaniques, ce que le fit soupconner d’etre sorcier” (Sprengel, Histoire de la Medecine, vol. ii, p. 389). For Albert’s biography treated strictly in accordance with ecclesiastical methods, see Albert the Great, by Joachim Sighart, translated by the Rev. T. A. Dickson, of the Order of Preachers, published under the sanction of the Dominican censor and of the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, London, 1876. How an Englishman like Cardinal Manning could tolerate among Englishmen such glossing over of historical truth is one of the wonders of contemporary history. For choice specimens, see chapters ii, and iv. For one of the best and most recent summaries, see Heller, Geschichte der Physik, Stuttgart, 1882, vol. i, pp. 179 et seq.

The next great man of that age whom the theological and ecclesiastical forces of the time turned from the right path was Vincent of Beauvais. During the first half of the twelfth century he devoted himself to the study of Nature in several of her most interesting fields. To astronomy, botany, and zoology he gave special attention, but in a larger way he made a general study of the universe, and in a series of treatises undertook to reveal the whole field of science. But his work simply became a vast commentary on the account of creation given in the book of Genesis. Beginning with the work of the Trinity at the creation, he goes on to detail the work of angels in all their fields, and makes excursions into every part of creation, visible and invisible, but always with the most complete subordination of his thought to the literal statements of Scripture. Could he have taken the path of experimental research, the world would have been enriched with most precious discoveries; but the force which had given wrong direction to Albert of Bollstadt, backed as it was by the whole ecclesiastical power of his time, was too strong, and in all the life labour of Vincent nothing appears of any permanent value. He reared a structure which the adaptation of facts to literal interpretations of Scripture and the application of theological subtleties to nature combine to make one of the most striking monuments of human error.[271]

[271] For Vincent de Beauvais, see Etudes sur Vincent de Beauvais, par l’Abbe Bourgeat, chaps. xii, xiii, and xiv; also Pouchet, Histoire des Sciences Naturelles au Moyen Age, Paris, 1853, pp. 470 et seq; also other histories cited hereafter.

But the theological spirit of the thirteenth century gained its greatest victory in the work of St. Thomas Aquinas. In him was the theological spirit of his age incarnate. Although he yielded somewhat at one period to love of natural science, it was he who finally made that great treaty or compromise which for ages subjected science entirely to theology. He it was who reared the most enduring barrier against those who in that age and in succeeding ages laboured to open for science the path by its own methods toward its own ends.

He had been the pupil of Albert the Great, and had gained much from him. Through the earlier systems of philosophy, as they were then known, and through the earlier theologic thought, he had gone with great labour and vigour; and all his mighty powers, thus disciplined and cultured, he brought to bear in making a truce which was to give theology permanent supremacy over science.

The experimental method had already been practically initiated: Albert of Bollstadt and Roger Bacon had begun their work in accordance with its methods; but St. Thomas gave all his thoughts to bringing science again under the sway of theological methods and ecclesiastical control. In his commentary on Aristotle’s treatise upon Heaven and Earth he gave to the world a striking example of what his method could produce, illustrating all the evils which arise in combining theological reasoning and literal interpretation of Scripture with scientific facts; and this work remains to this day a monument of scientific genius perverted by theology.[272]

[272] For citations showing this subordination of science to theology, see Eicken, chap. vi.

The ecclesiastical power of the time hailed him as a deliverer, it was claimed that miracles were vouchsafed, proving that the blessing of Heaven rested upon his labours, and among the legends embodying this claim is that given by the Bollandists and immortalized by a renowned painter. The great philosopher and saint is represented in the habit of his order, with book and pen in hand, kneeling before the image of Christ crucified, and as he kneels the image thus addresses him: “Thomas, thou hast written well concerning me; what price wilt thou receive for thy labour?” The myth-making faculty of the people at large was also brought into play. According to a widespread and circumstantial legend, Albert, by magical means, created an android–an artificial man, living, speaking, and answering all questions with such subtlety that St. Thomas, unable to answer its reasoning, broke it to pieces with his staff.

Historians of the Roman Church like Rohrbacher, and historians of science like Pouchet, have found it convenient to propitiate the Church by dilating upon the glories of St. Thomas Aquinas in thus making an alliance between religious and scientific thought, and laying the foundations for a “sanctified science”; but the unprejudiced historian can not indulge in this enthusiastic view: the results both for the Church and for science have been most unfortunate. It was a wretched delay in the evolution of fruitful thought, for the first result of this great man’s great compromise was to close for ages that path in science which above all others leads to discoveries of value–the experimental method–and to reopen that old path of mixed theology and science which, as Hallam declares, “after three or four hundred years had not untied a single knot or added one unequivocal truth to the domain of philosophy”–the path which, as all modern history proves, has ever since led only to delusion and evil.[273]

[273] For the work of Aquinas, see his Liber de Caelo et Mundo, section xx; also Life and Labours of St. Thomas of Aquin, by Archbishop Vaughn, pp. 459 et seq. For his labours in natural science, see Hoefer, Histoire de la Chimie, Paris, 1843, vol. i, p. 381. For theological views of science in the Middle Ages, and rejoicing thereat, see Pouchet, Hist. des Sci. Nat. au Moyen Age, ubi supra. Pouchet says: ” En general au milieu du moyen age les sciences sont essentiellement chretiennes, leur but est tout-a- fait religieux, et elles sembent beaucoup moins s’inquieter de l’avancement intellectuel de l’homme que de son salut eternel.” Pouchet calls this “conciliation” into a “harmonieux ensemble” “la plus glorieuse des conquetes intellectuelles du moyen age.” Pouchet belongs to Rouen, and the shadow of the Rouen Cathedral seems thrown over all his history. See, also, l’Abbe Rohrbacher, Hist. de l’Eglise Catholique, Paris, 1858, vol. xviii, pp. 421 et seq. The abbe dilates upon the fact that “the Church organizes the agreement of all the sciences by the labours of St. Thomas of Aquin and his contemporaries.” For the complete subordination of science to theology by St. Thomas, see Eicken, chap. vi. For the theological character of science in the Middle Ages, recognised by a Protestant philosophic historian, see the well-known passage in Guizot, History of Civilization in Europe; and by a noted Protestant ecclesiatic, see Bishop Hampden’s Life of Thomas Aquinas, chaps. xxxvi, xxxvii; see also Hallam, Middle Ages, chap. ix. For dealings of Pope John XXII, of the Kings of France and England, and of the Republic of Venice, see Figuier, L’Alchimie et la Alchimistes, pp. 140, 141, where, in a note, the text of the bull Spondet paritur is given. For popular legends regarding Albert and St. Thomas, see Eliphas Levi, Hist. de la Magie, liv. iv, chap. iv.

The theological path thus opened by these strong men became the main path for science during ages, and it led the world ever further and further from any fruitful fact or useful method. Roger Bacon’s investigations already begun were discredited: worthless mixtures of scriptural legends with imperfectly authenticated physical facts took their place. Thus it was that for twelve hundred years the minds in control of Europe regarded all real science as FUTILE, and diverted the great current of earnest thought into theology.

The next stage in this evolution was the development of an idea which acted with great force throughout the Middle Ages–the idea that science is DANGEROUS. This belief was also of very ancient origin. From the time when the Egyptian magicians made their tremendous threat that unless their demands were granted they would reach out to the four corners of the earth, pull down the pillars of heaven, wreck the abodes of the gods above and crush those of men below, fear of these representatives of science is evident in the ancient world.

But differences in the character of magic were recognised, some sorts being considered useful and some baleful. Of the former was magic used in curing diseases, in determining times auspicious for enterprises, and even in contributing to amusement; of the latter was magic used to bring disease and death on men and animals or tempests upon the growing crops. Hence gradually arose a general distinction between white magic, which dealt openly with the more beneficent means of nature, and black magic, which dealt secretly with occult, malignant powers.

Down to the Christian era the fear of magic rarely led to any persecution very systematic or very cruel. While in Greece and