The Superstitions of Witchcraft Part 7

Prospero is the type of the Theurgic, as Comus is of the Goetic, magician. His spiritual minister belongs to the order of good, or at least middle spirits--

'Too black for heav'n, and yet too white for h.e.l.l.'[108]

[108] Released by his new lord from the sorceric spell of that 'd.a.m.n'd witch Sycorax,' he comes gratefully, if somewhat weariedly, to answer his 'blest pleasure; be't to fly, to swim, to dive into the fire, to ride on the curl'd clouds,' &c.

Prospero, by an irresistible magic, subdued to his service the reluctant Caliban, a monster 'got by the devil himself upon his wicked dam:' but that semi-demon is degraded into a mere beast of burden, brutal and savage, with little of the spiritual essence of his male parent. Comus, as represented in that most beautiful drama by the genius of Milton, is of the cla.s.sic rather than Christian sort: he is the true son of Circe, using his mother's method of enchantment, transforming his unwary victims into the various forms or faces of the b.e.s.t.i.a.l herd. Like the island magician without his magical garment, the wicked enchanter without his wand loses his sorceric power; and--

'Without his rod reversed, And backward mutters of dissevering power,'

it is not possible to disenchant his spell-bound prisoners.

In the sixteenth century many wonderful stories obtained of the tremendous feats of the magic art. Those that related the lives of Bacon, and of Faust (of German origin), were best known in England; and, in the dramatic form, were represented on the stage. The comedy of 'Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay,' and the tragedy of 'The Life and Death of Dr. Faustus,' are perhaps the most esteemed of the dramatic writings of the age which preceded the appearance of Shakspeare. In the latter Faustus makes a compact with the devil, by which a familiar spirit and a preternatural art are granted him for twenty-four years. At the end of this period his soul is to be the reward of the demons.[109] From the 'Faustus' of Christopher Marlow, Goethe has derived the name and idea of the most celebrated tragedy of our day.

[109] Conscious of his approaching fate, the trembling magician replies to the anxious inquiries of his surrounding pupils--'"For the vain pleasure of four-and-twenty years hath Faustus lost eternal joy and felicity. I writ them a bill with my own blood; the date is expired; this is the time, and he will fetch me." First Scholar--"Why did not Faustus tell us of this before, that divines might have prayed for thee?" Faust--"Oft have I thought to have done so; but the devil threatened to tear me in pieces if I named G.o.d; to fetch me body and soul if I once gave ear to divinity. And now it is too late."' As the fearful moment fast approaches, Dr. Faustus, orthodox on the subject of the duration of future punishment, exclaims in agony--

'Oh! if my soul must suffer for my sin, Impose some end to my incessant pain.

Let Faustus live in h.e.l.l a thousand years-- A hundred thousand, and at the last be saved: No end is limited to d.a.m.ned souls.

Why wert thou not a creature wanting soul?

Oh, why is this immortal that thou hast?' &c.

Mephistopheles, it need hardly be added, was on this occasion true to his reputation for punctuality. _Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay_ is remarked for being one of the last dramatic pieces in which the devil appears on the stage in his proper person--1591. It is also noticeable that he is the only Scripture character in the new form of the play retained from the _miracles_ which delighted the spectators in the fifteenth century, who were at once edified and gratified by the corporal chastis.e.m.e.nt inflicted upon his vicarious back.

Magic and necromantic prowess was equally recognised in Southern Europe. The Italian poets employed such imposing paraphernalia in the construction of an epic; and Cervantes has ridiculed the prevailing belief of his countrymen.[110]

[110] Benvenuto Cellini, the Florentine engraver, in his amusing _Autobiography_, astonishes his readers with some necromantic wonders of which he was an eyewitness. Cellini had become acquainted and enamoured with a beautiful Sicilian, from whom he was suddenly separated. He tells with his accustomed candour and confidence, 'I was then indulging myself in pleasures of all sorts, and engaged in another amour to cancel the memory of my Sicilian mistress. It happened, through a variety of odd accidents, that I made acquaintance with a Sicilian priest, who was a man of genius, and well versed in the Latin and Greek authors.

Happening one day to have some conversation with him upon the art of necromancy, I, who had a great desire to know something of the matter, told him I had all my life felt a curiosity to be acquainted with the mysteries of this art.

The priest made answer that the man must be of a resolute and steady temper who enters upon that study.' And so it should seem from the event. One night, Cellini, with a companion familiar with the Black Art, attended the priest to the Colosseum, where the latter, 'according to the custom of necromancy, began to draw marks upon the ground, with the most impressive ceremonies imaginable; he likewise brought thither _asaf[oe]tida, several precious perfumes and fire, with some compositions which diffused noisome odours_.'

Although several legions of devils obeyed the summons of the conjurations or compositions, the sorceric rites were not attended with complete success. But on a succeeding night, 'the necromancer having begun to make his tremendous invocations, called by their names a mult.i.tude of demons who were the leaders of the several legions, and invoked them by the virtue and power of the eternal uncreated G.o.d, who lives for ever, insomuch that the amphitheatre was almost in an instant filled with demons a hundred times more numerous than at the former conjuration ... I, by the direction of the necromancer, again desired to be in the company of my Angelica. The former thereupon turning to me said, "Know that they have declared that in the s.p.a.ce of a month you shall be in her company." He then requested me to stand resolutely by him, because the legion were now above a thousand more in number than he had designed; and besides, these were the most dangerous, so that after they had answered my question it behoved him to be civil to them and dismiss them quietly.' The infernal legions were more easily evoked than dismissed. He proceeds--'Though I was as much terrified as any of them, I did my utmost to conceal the terror I felt; so that I greatly contributed to inspire the rest with resolution. But the truth is,' ingenuously confesses the amorous artist, 'I gave myself over for a dead man, seeing the horrid fright the necromancer was in.'--_Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini_, chap. xiii., Roscoe's transl.--The information was verified, and Benvenuto enjoyed the society of his mistress at the time foretold.

Alchymy, the science of the transformation of baser metals into gold, a pursuit which engaged the anxious thought and wasted the health, time, and fortunes of numbers of fanatical empirics, was one of the most prized of the abstruse _occult_ arts. Monarchs, princes, the great of all countries, eagerly vied among themselves in encouraging with promises and sometimes with more substantial incentives the zeal of their illusive search; and Henry IV. of France could see no reason why, if the bread and wine were transubstantiated so miraculously, a metal could not be transformed as well.[111]

[111] The cla.s.s of horoscopists (the old Chaldaic _genethliacs_), or those who predicted the fortunes of individuals by an examination of the planet which presided at the natal hour, was as much in vogue as that of any other of the masters of the occult arts; and La Fontaine, towards the end of the seventeenth century, apostrophises the cla.s.s:

'Charlatans, faiseurs d'horoscope!

Quittez les cours des princes de l'Europe; Emmenez avec vous les souffleurs tout d'un temps; Vous ne meritez pas plus de foi.'....

_Fables_, ii. 13.

But it is only necessary to recollect the name of Cagliostro (Balsamo) and others who in the eighteenth century could successfully speculate upon the credulity of people of rank and education, to moderate our wonder at the success of earlier empirics.

Among the eminent names of self-styled or reputed masters of the n.o.bler or white magic, some, like the celebrated Paracelsus, were men of extraordinary attainments and largely acquainted with the secrets of natural science. A necessarily imperfect knowledge, a natural desire to impose upon the ignorant wonder of the vulgar, and the vanity of a learning which was ambitious of exhibiting, in the most imposing if less intelligible way, their superior knowledge, were probably the mixed causes which led such distinguished scholars as Paracelsus, Cornelius Agrippa, Cardan, and Campanella to oppress themselves and their readers with a ma.s.s of unintelligible rubbish and cabalistic mysticism.[112]

Slow and gradual as are the successive advances in the knowledge and improvement of mankind, it would not be reasonable to be surprised that preceding generations could not at once attain to the knowledge of a maturer age; and the teachers of mankind groped their dark and uncertain way in ages dest.i.tute of the illumination of modern times.'[113]

[112]

'Cardan believed great states depend Upon the tip o' th'

Bear's tail's end,'

correctly enough expresses both the persuasion of the public and that of many of the soi-disant philosophers of the intimate dependence of the fates of both states and individuals of this globe upon other globes in the universe.

[113] It was not so much a want of sufficient observation of known facts, as the want of a true method and of verification, which rendered the investigations of the earlier philosophers so vague and uncertain. And the same causes which necessarily prevented Aristotle, the greatest intellect perhaps that has ever illuminated the world, from attaining to the greater perfection of the modern philosophy, are applicable, in a greater degree, to the case of the mediaeval and later discoverers. The causes of the failure of the pre-scientific world are well stated by a living writer.

'Men cannot, or at least they will not, await the tardy results of discovery; they will not sit down in avowed ignorance. Imagination supplies the deficiencies of observation. A theoretic arch is thrown across the chasm, because men are unwilling to wait till a solid bridge be constructed.... The early thinkers, by reason of the very splendour of their capacities, were not less incompetent to follow the slow processes of scientific investigation, than a tribe of martial savages to adopt the strategy and discipline of modern armies. No acc.u.mulated laws, no well-tried methods existed for their aid. The elementary laws in each department were mostly undetected.' The guide of knowledge is verification. 'The complexity of phenomena is that of a labyrinth, the paths of which cross and recross each other; one wrong turn causes the wanderer infinite perplexity.

Verification is the Ariadne-thread by which the real issues may be found. Unhappily, the process of verification is slow, tedious, often difficult and deceptive; and we are by nature lazy and impatient, hating labour, eager to obtain. Hence credulity. We accept facts without scrutiny, inductions without proof; and we yield to our disposition to believe that the order of phenomena must correspond with our conceptions.' A profound truth is contained in the a.s.sertion of Comte (_Cours de Philosophie Positive_) that 'men have still more need of method than of doctrine, of education than of instruction.'--_Aristotle_, by G. H. Lewes.

CHAPTER V.

Sorcery in Southern Europe--Cause of the Retention of the Demonological Creed among the Protestant Sects--Calvinists the most Fanatical of the Reformed Churches--Witch-Creed sanctioned in the Authorised Version of the Sacred Scriptures--The Witch-Act of 1604--James VI.'s 'Demonologie'--Lycanthropy and Executions in France--The French Provincial Parliaments active in pa.s.sing Laws against the various Witch-practices--Witchcraft in the Pyrenees--Commission of Inquiry appointed--Its Results--Demonology in Spain.

In the annals of black magic, the silent tribunals of the Inquisition in Southern Europe which has consigned so many thousands of heretics to the torture room and to the flames, do not reveal so many trials for the simple crime of witchcraft as the tribunals of the more northern peoples: there all dissent from Catholic and priestly dogma was believed to be inspired by the powers of h.e.l.l, deserving a common punishment, whether in the form of denial of transubstantiation, infallibility, of skill in magic, or of the vulgar practice of sorcery. Throughout Europe penalties and prosecutions were being continually enacted. The popes in Italy fulminated abroad their decrees, and the parliaments of France were almost daily engaged in p.r.o.nouncing sentence.

Where the papal yoke had been thrown off in Northern Germany, in Scotland, and in England, the belief and the persecution remained in full force, indeed greatly increased; and it is obvious to inquire the cause of the retention, with many additions, of the doctrine of witchcraft by those who had at last finally rejected with scorn most of the grosser religious dogmas of the old Church, who were so loud in their just denunciation of Catholic tyranny and superst.i.tion. A general answer might be given that the Reformation of the sixteenth century, while it swept away in those countries in which it was effected the most injurious principles of ecclesiasticism, the principles of infallibility and authority in matters of faith, for the destruction of which grat.i.tude is due to the independent minds of Luther, Zuinglius, and others, was yet far from complete in its negations. The leaders of that great revolution, with all their genius and boldness, could only partially free themselves from the prejudices of education and of the age. To develope the important principles they established, the rights of private judgment and religious freedom, was the legacy and duty of their successors; a duty which they failed to perform, to the incalculable misfortune of succeeding generations. The Sacred Scriptures, the common and only authority on faith among the different sections of Protestantism, unfortunately seemed to inculcate the dread power of the devil and his malicious purposes, and both the Jewish and Christian Scriptures apparently taught the reality of witchcraft. Theologians of all parties would have as easily dared to question the existence of G.o.d himself as to doubt the actual power of that other deity, and the unbelievers in his universal interference were not illogically stigmatised as atheists. With the Protestants some advent.i.tious circ.u.mstances might make a particular church more fanatical and furious than another, and the Calvinists have deserved the palm for the bitterest persecution of witchcraft. But neither the Lutheran nor the Anglican section is exempt from the odious imputation.[114]

[114] Lord Peter, and his humbler brothers Martin and Jack, in different degrees, are all of them obnoxious to the accusation; and Bossuet (_Variations des Eglises Protestantes_, xi. 201), who is a.s.sured that St. Paul predicted the 'doctrines of devils' to be characteristic of Manichaean and Albigensian heresy, might have more safely interpreted the prophecy as applicable to the universal Christian Church (at least of Western Europe) of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

The followers of Calvin were most deeply imbued with hatred and horror of Catholic practices, and, adopting the old prejudice or policy of their antagonists, they were willing to confound the superst.i.tious rites of Catholicism with those of demonolatry. The Anglican Church party, whose principles were not so entirely opposite to the old religion, had far less antipathy: until the revolution of 1688 it was for the most part engaged in contending against liberty rather than against despotism of conscience; against Calvinism than against Catholicism. Yet the Church of England is exposed to the reproach of having sanctioned the common opinions in the most authoritative manner. In the authorised version of the Sacred Scriptures, in the translation of which into the English language forty-seven selected divines, eminent for position and learning, could concur in consecrating a vulgar superst.i.tion, the most imposing sanction was given.

Had they possessed either common sense or courage, these Anglican divines might have expressed their disbelief or doubt of its truth by a more rational, and possibly more proper, interpretation of the Hebrew and Greek expressions; or if that was not possible, by an accompanying unequivocal protest. But the subservience as well as superst.i.tion of the English Church under the last of the Tudors and under the Stuarts is equally a matter of fact and of reprobation.

It was in the first year of the first King of Great Britain that the English Parliament pa.s.sed the Act which remained in force, or at least on the Statute Book, until towards the middle of last century.[115] After due consideration the bill pa.s.sed both Houses; and by it, it was enacted that 'If any person shall use any invocation or conjuration of any evil or wicked spirit, or shall consult, covenant with, entertain, employ, feed, or reward any evil or cursed spirit to or for any intent or purpose, or take up any dead man, woman, or child out of the grave--or the skin, bone, or any part of the dead person, to be employed or used in any manner of witchcraft, sorcery, charm, or enchantment; or shall use, exercise, or practice any sort of witchcraft, &c., whereby any person shall be destroyed, killed, wasted, consumed, pined or lamed in any part of the body; that every such person being convicted shall suffer death.' Twelve bishops sat in the Committee of the Upper House.[116]

[115] The 'Witch Act' of James I. was pa.s.sed in the year 1604. The new translation, or the present authorised version, of the Bible, was executed in 1607. The inference seems plain. An ecclesiastical canon pa.s.sed at the same period, which prohibits the inferior clergy from exorcising without episcopal licence, proves at the same time the prevalence of 'possession' and the prevalence of exorcism in the beginning of the seventeenth century.

[116] The parliament of James I. would have done wisely to have embraced the philosophic sentiment of a Hungarian prince (1095-1114) who is said to have dismissed the absurd superst.i.tion with laconic brevity: 'De strigis vero, quae non sunt, nulla quaestio fiat.'

The Scottish Parliament, during Queen Mary's reign, anathematised the _papistical_ practices; and from that time the annals of Scottish judicature are filled with records of trials and convictions. James was educated among the stern adherents of Calvin. In whatever matters of ecclesiastical faith and rule the countryman of Knox may have deviated from the teaching of his preceptors, he maintained with constant zeal his faith in the devil's omnipotence; and we may be disposed to concede the t.i.tle of 'Defender of the Faith' (so confidently prefixed to successive editions of the Authorised Version) to his activity in the extermination of witches, rather than to his hatred of priestcraft. While monarch only of the Northern kingdom, he published a denunciation of the d.a.m.nable infidelity of the 'Witch Advocates,' and his own unhesitating belief. James VI. and his clerical advisers were persuaded, or affected to be persuaded, that the devil, with all his h.e.l.lish crew, was conspiring to frustrate the beneficial intentions of a pious Protestant prince.

Infernal despair and rage reached the climax when the marriage with the Danish princess was to be effected. But, far from being terrified by so formidable a conspiracy, he gloried in the persuasion that he was the devil's greatest enemy; and the man who shuddered at the sight of a drawn sword was not afraid to enter the lists against the _invisible_ spiritual enemy.

The 'Demonologie' was published at Edinburgh in 1597. The author introduces his book with these words: 'The fearful abounding at this time in this country of these detestable slaves of the devil, the witches or enchanters, hath moved me (beloved reader) to despatch in post this following treatise of mine, not in any wise (as I protest) to serve for a show of my learning and ingine, but only moved of conscience to press thereby so far as I can to resolve the doubting hearts of many; both that such a.s.saults of Sathan are most certainly practised, and that the instruments thereof merits most severely to be punished: against the d.a.m.nable opinions of two princ.i.p.ally in our age, whereof the one called Scot, an Englishman, is not ashamed in public print to deny that there can be such a thing as witchcraft, and so maintains the old error of the Sadducees in denying of spirits.

The other, called Wierus, a German physician, sets out a public apology for all these crafts-folks, whereby procuring for their impunity, he plainly bewrays himself to have been one of that profession. And for to make this treatise the more pleasant and facile, I have put it in form of a dialogue, which I have divided into three books: the first speaking of magic in general, and necromancy in special; the second, of sorcery and witchcraft; and the third contains a discourse of all those kinds of spirits and spectres that appears and troubles persons, together with a conclusion of the whole work. My intention in this labour is only to prove two things, as I have already said: the one, that such devilish arts have been and are; the other, what exact trial and severe punishment they merit; and therefore reason I what kind of things are possible to be performed in these arts, and by what natural causes they may be. Not that I touch every particular thing of the devil's power, for that were infinite; but only, to speak scholasticly (since this cannot be spoken in our language), I reason upon _genus_, leaving _species_ and _differentia_ to be comprehended therein.'[117]

[117] Speculating on the manner of witches' aerial travels, he thinks, 'Another way is somewhat more strange, and yet it is possible to be true: which is, by being carried by the force of their spirit, which is their conductor, either above the earth or above the sea swiftly to the place where they are to meet: which I am persuaded to be likewise possible, in respect that as Habakkuk was carried by the angel in that form to the den where Daniel lay, so think I the devil will be ready to imitate G.o.d as well in that as in other things, which is much more possible to him to do, being a spirit, than to a mighty wind, being but a natural meteor to transport from one place to another a solid body, as is commonly and daily seen in practice. But in this violent form they cannot be carried but a short bounds, agreeing with the s.p.a.ce that they may retain their breath; for if it were longer their breath could not remain unextinguished, their body being carried in such a violent and forcible manner.... And in this transporting they say themselves that they are invisible to any other, except amongst themselves. For if the devil may form what kind of impressions he pleases in the air, as I have said before, speaking of magic, why may he not far easier thicken and obscure so the air that is next about them, by contracting it straight together that the beams of any other man's eyes cannot pierce through the same to see them?'

&c.--_Cyclopaedia of English Literature_, edited by Robert Chambers.

The following injunction is characteristic of all persecuting maxims, and is worthy of the disciple of Bodin: 'Witches ought to be put to death according to the law of G.o.d, the civil and the imperial law, and the munic.i.p.al law of all Christian nations.

Yea, to spare the life and not to strike whom G.o.d bids strike, and so severely in so odious a treason against G.o.d, is not only unlawful but doubtless as great a sin in the magistrate as was Saul's sparing Agag.' It is insisted upon by this _sagacious_ author (echoing the rules laid down in the 'Malleus'), that any and every evidence is good against an exceptional crime: that the testimony of the youngest children, and of persons of the most infamous character, not only may, but ought to be, received.

This mischievous production is a curious collection of demonological learning and experience, exhibiting the reputed practices and ceremonies of witches, the mode of detecting them, &c.; but is useless even for the purpose of showing the popular Scottish or English notions, being chiefly a medley of cla.s.sical or foreign ideas, inserted apparently (spite of the royal author's a.s.surance to the contrary) to parade an array of abstruse and pedantic learning. That some of the excessive terror said to have been exhibited was simulated to promote his pretensions to the especial hostility of Satan, is probable: but that also he was impressed, in some degree, with a real and lively fear scarcely admits of doubt. The modern Solomon might well have blushed at the superior common sense of a barbaric chief; and the 'judges of the seventeenth century might have been instructed and confounded at the superior wisdom of Rotharis [a Lombardic prince], who derides the absurd superst.i.tion and protects the wretched victims of popular or judicial cruelty.'[118]

[118] _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_, xlv. It would have been well for his subjects if he could have congratulated himself, like Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (the model of philosophic princes, and a more practically virtuous, if not wiser, philosopher than the proverbial Solomon, and of whom Niebuhr, _History of Rome_, v., a.s.serts, 'If there is any sublime human virtue, it is his'), that he had learnt from his instructors to laugh at the bugbears of witches and demons.--[Greek: Ta eis heauton.]--_The Meditations of M. A. Antoninus._

Previously to the 'Witch Act,' the charge of sorcery was, in most cases, a subordinate and subsidiary one, attached to various political or other indictments. Henceforward the practice of the peculiar offence might be entirely independent of any more substantial accusation. In England, compared with the other countries of Europe, folly more than ferocity, perhaps, generally characterises the proceedings of the tribunals. During the pre-Reformation ages, France, even more than her island neighbour, suffered from the crime. The fates of the Templars, of Jeanne d'Arc, of Arras, of those suspected of causing the mad king's, Charles VI., derangement (when many of the _white_ witches, or wizards, 'mischievously good,' suffered for failing, by a pretended skill, to effect his promised cure) are some of the more conspicuous examples. But in France, as in the rest of Europe, it was in the post-feudal period that prosecutions became of almost daily occurrence.

A prevalent kind of sorcery was that of lycanthropy, as it was called, a prejudice derived, it seems, in part from the Pythagorean metempsychosis. A few cases will ill.u.s.trate the nature of this stupendous transformation. That it is mostly found to take place in France and in the southern districts, the country of wolves, that still make their ravages there, is a fact easily intelligible; and if the devil can enter into swine, he can also, in the opinion of the demonologists, as easily enter into wolves. At Dole, in 1573, a loup-garou, or wehr-wolf (man-wolf), was accused of devastating the country and devouring little children. The indictment was read by Henri Camus, doctor of laws and counsellor of the king, to the effect that the accused, Gilles Garnier, had killed a girl twelve years of age, having torn her to pieces, partly with his teeth, and partly with his wolf's paws; that having dragged the body into the forest, he there devoured the larger portion, reserving the remainder for his wife; also that, by reason of injuries inflicted in a similar way on another young girl, the loup-garou had occasioned her death; also that he had devoured a boy of thirteen, tearing him limb by limb; that he displayed the same unnatural propensities even in his own proper shape. Fifty persons were found to bear witness; and he was put to the rack, which elicited an unreserved confession. He was then brought back into court, when Dr. Camus, in the name of the Parliament of Dole, p.r.o.nounced the following sentence: 'Seeing that Gilles Garnier has, by the testimony of credible witnesses and by his own spontaneous confession, been proved guilty of the abominable crimes of lycanthropy and witchcraft, this court condemns him, the said Grilles, to be this day taken in a cart from this spot to the place of execution, accompanied by the executioner, where he, by the said executioner, shall be tied to a stake and burned alive, and that his ashes be then scattered to the winds. The court further condemns him, the said Gilles, to the costs of this prosecution.

Given at Dole this 18th day of January, 1573.' Five years later a man named Jacques Rollet was burned alive in the Place de Greve for the same crime, having been tried and condemned by the Parliament of Paris.[119]

[119] A still more sensational case happened at a village in the mountains of Auvergne. A gentleman while hunting was suddenly attacked by a savage wolf of monstrous size.