Curiosities of Literature Volume I Part 24

Judicial combat appears to have been practised by the Jews. Whenever the rabbins had to decide on a dispute about property between two parties, neither of which could produce evidence to substantiate his claim, they terminated it by single combat. The rabbins were impressed by a notion, that consciousness of right would give additional confidence and strength to the rightful possessor. It may, however, be more philosophical to observe, that such judicial combats were more frequently favourable to the criminal than to the innocent, because the bold wicked man is usually more ferocious and hardy than he whom he singles out as his victim, and who only wishes to preserve his own quiet enjoyment:--in this case the a.s.sailant is the more terrible combatant.

Those accused of robbery were put to trial by a piece of barley-bread, on which the ma.s.s had been said; which if they could not swallow, they were declared guilty. This mode of trial was improved by adding to the _bread_ a slice of _cheese_; and such was their credulity, that they were very particular in this holy _bread_ and _cheese_, called the _corsned_. The bread was to be of unleavened barley, and the cheese made of ewe's milk in the month of May.

Du Cange observed, that the expression--"_May this piece of bread choke me!_" comes from this custom. The anecdote of Earl G.o.dwin's death by swallowing a piece of bread, in making this a.s.severation, is recorded in our history. Doubtless superst.i.tion would often terrify the innocent person, in the attempt of swallowing a consecrated morsel.

Among the proofs of guilt in superst.i.tious ages was that of the _bleeding of a corpse_. It was believed, that at the touch or approach of the murderer the blood gushed out of the murdered. By the side of the bier, if the slightest change was observable in the eyes, the mouth, feet, or hands of the corpse, the murderer was conjectured to be present, and many innocent spectators must have suffered death. "When a body is full of blood, warmed by a sudden external heat, and a putrefaction coming on, some of the blood-vessels will burst, as they will all in time." This practice was once allowed in England, and is still looked on in some of the uncivilized parts of these kingdoms as a detection of the criminal. It forms a solemn picture in the histories and ballads of our old writers.

Robertson observes, that all these absurd inst.i.tutions were cherished from the superst.i.tious of the age believing the legendary histories of those saints who crowd and disgrace the Roman calendar. These fabulous miracles had been declared authentic by the bulls of the popes and the decrees of councils; they were greedily swallowed by the populace; and whoever believed that the Supreme Being had interposed miraculously on those trivial occasions mentioned in legends, could not but expect the intervention of Heaven in these most solemn appeals. These customs were a subst.i.tute for written laws, which that barbarous period had not; and as no society can exist without _laws_, the ignorance of the people had recourse to these _customs_, which, evil and absurd as they were, closed endless controversies. Ordeals are in truth the rude laws of a barbarous people who have not yet obtained a written code, and are not sufficiently advanced in civilization to enter into the refined inquiries, the subtile distinctions, and elaborate investigations, which a court of law demands.

These ordeals probably originate in that one of Moses called the "Waters of Jealousy." The Greeks likewise had ordeals, for in the Antigonus of Sophocles the soldiers offer to prove their innocence by handling red-hot iron, and walking between fires. One cannot but smile at the whimsical ordeals of the Siamese. Among other practices to discover the justice of a cause, civil or criminal, they are particularly attached to using certain consecrated purgative pills, which they make the contending parties swallow. He who _retains_ them longest gains his cause! The practice of giving Indians a consecrated grain of rice to swallow is known to discover the thief, in any company, by the contortions and dismay evident on the countenance of the real thief.

In the middle ages, they were acquainted with _secrets_ to pa.s.s unhurt these singular trials. Voltaire mentions one for undergoing the ordeal of boiling water. Our late travellers in the East have confirmed this statement. The Mevleheh dervises can hold red-hot iron between their teeth. Such artifices have been often publicly exhibited at Paris and London. Mr. Sharon Turner observes, on the ordeal of the Anglo-Saxons, that the hand was not to be immediately inspected, and was left to the chance of a good const.i.tution to be so far healed during three days (the time they required to be bound up and sealed, before it was examined) as to discover those appearances when inspected, which were allowed to be satisfactory. There was likewise much preparatory training, suggested by the more experienced; besides, the accused had an opportunity of _going alone into the church_, and making _terms_ with the _priest_. The few _spectators_ were always _distant_; and cold iron might be subst.i.tuted, and the fire diminished, at the moment.

They possessed secrets and medicaments, to pa.s.s through these trials in perfect security. An anecdote of these times may serve to show their readiness. A rivals.h.i.+p existed between the Austin-friars and the Jesuits. The father-general of the Austin-friars was dining with the Jesuits; and when the table was removed, he entered into a formal discourse of the superiority of the monastic order, and charged the Jesuits, in unqualified terms, with a.s.suming the t.i.tle of "fratres,"

while they held not the three vows, which other monks were obliged to consider as sacred and binding. The general of the Austin-friars was very eloquent and very authoritative:--and the superior of the Jesuits was very unlearned, but not half a fool.

The Jesuit avoided entering the list of controversy with the Austin-friar, but arrested his triumph by asking him if he would see one of his friars, who pretended to be nothing more than a Jesuit, and one of the Austin-friars who religiously performed the aforesaid three vows, show instantly which of them would be the readier to obey his superiors? The Austin-friar consented. The Jesuit then turning to one of his brothers, the holy friar Mark, who was waiting on them, said, "Brother Mark, our companions are cold. I command you, in virtue of the holy obedience you have sworn to me, to bring here instantly out of the kitchen-fire, and in your hands, some burning coals, that they may warm themselves over your hands." Father Mark instantly obeys, and, to the astonishment of the Austin-friar, brought in his hands a supply of red burning coals, and held them to whoever chose to warm himself; and at the command of his superior returned them to the kitchen-hearth. The general of the Austin-friars, with the rest of his brotherhood, stood amazed; he looked wistfully on one of his monks, as if he wished to command him to do the like. But the Austin monk, who perfectly understood him, and saw this was not a time to hesitate, observed,--"Reverend father, forbear, and do not command me to tempt G.o.d! I am ready to fetch you fire in a chafing-dish, but not in my bare hands." The triumph of the Jesuits was complete; and it is not necessary to add, that the _miracle_ was noised about, and that the Austin-friars could never account for it, notwithstanding their strict performance of the three vows!

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 52: These curious pa.s.sages, so strikingly indicative of the state of thought in the days of their authors, are worth clearly noting.

Pilate's challenge to the Saviour is completely in the taste of the writer's day. He was Adam Davie, a poet of the fourteenth century, of whom an account is preserved in _Warton's History of English Poetry_; and the pa.s.sage occurs in his poem of the _Battle of Jerusalem_, the incidents of which are treated as Froissart would treat the siege of a town happening in his own day.

The second pa.s.sage above quoted occurs in the _Vision of Piers Plowman_, a poem of the same era, where the Roman soldier--whose name, according to legendary history, was Longinus, and who pierced the Saviour's side--is described as if he had given the wound in a pa.s.sage of arms, or joust; and elsewhere in the same poem it is said that Christ,

"For mankyndes sake, Justed in Jerusalem, A joye to us all."

And in another part of the poem, speaking of the victory of Christ, it is said--

"Jhesus justede well."]

THE INQUISITION.

Innocent the Third, a pope as enterprising as he was successful in his enterprises, having sent Dominic with some missionaries into Languedoc, these men so irritated the heretics they were sent to convert, that most of them were a.s.sa.s.sinated at Toulouse in the year 1200. He called in the aid of temporal arms, and published against them a crusade, granting, as was usual with the popes on similar occasions, all kinds of indulgences and pardons to those who should arm against these _Mahometans_, so he termed these unfortunate Languedocians. Once all were Turks when they were not Romanists. Raymond, Count of Toulouse, was constrained to submit. The inhabitants were pa.s.sed on the edge of the sword, without distinction of age or s.e.x. It was then he established that scourge of Europe, THE INQUISITION. This pope considered that, though men might be compelled to submit by arms, numbers might remain professing particular dogmas; and he established this sanguinary tribunal solely to inspect into all families, and INQUIRE concerning all persons who they imagined were unfriendly to the interests of Rome. Dominic did so much by his persecuting inquiries, that he firmly established the Inquisition at Toulouse.

Not before the year 1484 it became known in Spain. To another Dominican, John de Torquemada, the court of Rome owed this obligation. As he was the confessor of Queen Isabella, he had extorted from her a promise, that if ever she ascended the throne, she would use every means to extirpate heresy and heretics. Ferdinand had conquered Granada, and had expelled from the Spanish realms mult.i.tudes of unfortunate Moors. A few remained, whom, with the Jews, he compelled to become Christians: they at least a.s.sumed the name; but it was well known that both these nations naturally respected their own faith, rather than that of the Christians.

This race was afterwards distinguished as _Christianos Novos_; and in forming marriages, the blood of the Hidalgo was considered to lose its purity by mingling with such a suspicious source.

Torquemada pretended that this dissimulation would greatly hurt the interests of the holy religion. The queen listened with respectful diffidence to her confessor; and at length gained over the king to consent to the establishment of this unrelenting tribunal. Torquemada, indefatigable in his zeal for the holy chair, in the s.p.a.ce of fourteen years that he exercised the office of chief inquisitor, is said to have prosecuted near eighty thousand persons, of whom six thousand were condemned to the flames.

Voltaire attributes the taciturnity of the Spaniards to the universal horror such proceedings spread. "A general jealousy and suspicion took possession of all ranks of people: friends.h.i.+p and sociability were at an end! Brothers were afraid of brothers, fathers of their children."

The situation and the feelings of one imprisoned in the cells of the Inquisition are forcibly painted by Orobio, a mild, and meek, and learned man, whose controversy with Limborch is well known. When he escaped from Spain he took refuge in Holland, was circ.u.mcised, and died a philosophical Jew. He has left this admirable description of himself in the cell of the Inquisition. "Inclosed in this dungeon I could not even find s.p.a.ce enough to turn myself about; I suffered so much that I felt my brain disordered. I frequently asked myself, am I really Don Balthazar Orobio, who used to walk about Seville at my pleasure, who so greatly enjoyed myself with my wife and children? I often imagined that all my life had only been a dream, and that I really had been born in this dungeon! The only amus.e.m.e.nt I could invent was metaphysical disputations. I was at once opponent, respondent, and praeses!"

In the cathedral at Saragossa is the tomb of a famous inquisitor; six pillars surround this tomb; to each is chained a Moor, as preparatory to his being burnt. On this St. Foix ingeniously observes, "If ever the Jack Ketch of any country should be rich enough to have a splendid tomb, this might serve as an excellent model."

The Inquisition punished heretics by _fire_, to elude the maxim, "_Ecclesia non novit sanguinem_;" for burning a man, say they, does not _shed his blood_. Otho, the bishop at the Norman invasion, in the tapestry worked by Matilda the queen of William the Conqueror, is represented with a _mace_ in his hand, for the purpose that when he _despatched_ his antagonist he might not _spill blood_, but only break his bones! Religion has had her quibbles as well as law.

The establishment of this despotic order was resisted in France; but it may perhaps surprise the reader that a recorder of London, in a speech, urged the necessity of setting up an Inquisition in England! It was on the trial of Penn the Quaker, in 1670, who was acquitted by the jury, which highly provoked the said recorder. "_Magna Charta_," writes the prefacer to the trial, "with the recorder of London, is nothing more than _Magna F----!_" It appears that the jury, after being kept two days and two nights to alter their verdict, were in the end both fined and imprisoned. Sir John Howell, the recorder, said, "Till now I never understood the reason of the policy and prudence of the Spaniards in suffering the Inquisition among them; and certainly it will not be well with us, till something _like unto the Spanish Inquisition be in England_." Thus it will ever be, while both parties struggling for the pre-eminence rush to the sharp extremity of things, and annihilate the trembling balance of the const.i.tution. But the adopted motto of Lord Erskine must ever be that of every Briton, "_Trial by Jury_."

So late as the year 1761, Gabriel Malagrida, an old man of seventy, was burnt by these evangelical executioners. His trial was printed at Amsterdam, 1762, from the Lisbon copy. And for what was this unhappy Jesuit condemned? Not, as some have imagined, for his having been concerned in a conspiracy against the king of Portugal. No other charge is laid to him in this trial but that of having indulged certain heretical notions, which any other tribunal but that of the Inquisition would have looked upon as the delirious fancies of a fanatical old man.

Will posterity believe, that in the eighteenth century an aged visionary was led to the stake for having said, amongst other extravagances, that "The holy Virgin having commanded him to write the life of Anti-Christ, told him that he, Malagrida, was a second John, but more clear than John the Evangelist; that there were to be three Anti-Christs, and that the last should be born at Milan, of a monk and a nun, in the year 1920; and that he would marry Proserpine, one of the infernal furies."

For such ravings as these the unhappy old man was burnt in recent times.

Granger a.s.sures us, that in his remembrance a _horse_ that had been taught to tell the spots upon cards, the hour of the day, &c., by significant tokens, was, together with his _owner_, put into the Inquisition for _both_ of them dealing with the devil! A man of letters declared that, having fallen into their hands, nothing perplexed him so much as the ignorance of the inquisitor and his council; and it seemed very doubtful whether they had read even the Scriptures.[53]

One of the most interesting anecdotes relating to the terrible Inquisition, exemplifying how the use of the diabolical engines of torture forces men to confess crimes they have not been guilty of, was related to me by a Portuguese gentleman.

A n.o.bleman in Lisbon having heard that his physician and friend was imprisoned by the Inquisition, under the stale pretext of Judaism, addressed a letter to one of them to request his freedom, a.s.suring the inquisitor that his friend was as orthodox a Christian as himself. The physician, notwithstanding this high recommendation, was put to the torture; and, as was usually the case, at the height of his sufferings confessed everything they wished! This enraged the n.o.bleman, and feigning a dangerous illness he begged the inquisitor would come to give him his last spiritual aid.

As soon as the Dominican arrived, the lord, who had prepared his confidential servants, commanded the inquisitor in their presence to acknowledge himself a Jew, to write his confession, and to sign it. On the refusal of the inquisitor, the n.o.bleman ordered his people to put on the inquisitor's head a red-hot helmet, which to his astonishment, in drawing aside a screen, he beheld glowing in a small furnace. At the sight of this new instrument of torture, "Luke's iron crown," the monk wrote and subscribed the abhorred confession. The n.o.bleman then observed, "See now the enormity of your manner of proceeding with unhappy men! My poor physician, like you, has confessed Judaism; but with this difference, only torments have forced that from him which fear alone has drawn from you!"

The Inquisition has not failed of receiving its due praises. Macedo, a Portuguese Jesuit, has discovered the "Origin of the _Inquisition_" in the terrestrial Paradise, and presumes to allege that G.o.d was the first who began the functions of an _inquisitor_ over Cain and the workmen of Babel! Macedo, however, is not so dreaming a personage as he appears; for he obtained a Professor's chair at Padua for the arguments he delivered at Venice against the pope, which were published by the t.i.tle of "The literary Roarings of the Lion at St. Mark;" besides he is the author of 109 different works; but it is curious to observe how far our interest is apt to prevail over our conscience,--Macedo praised the Inquisition up to the skies, while he sank the pope to nothing!

Among the great revolutions of this age, and since the last edition of this work, the Inquisition in Spain and Portugal is abolished--but its history enters into that of the human mind; and the history of the Inquisition by Limborch, translated by Chandler, with a very curious "Introduction," loses none of its value with the philosophical mind.

This monstrous tribunal of human opinions aimed at the sovereignty of the intellectual world, without intellect.

In these changeful times, the history of the Inquisition is not the least mutable. The Inquisition, which was abolished, was again restored--and at the present moment, I know not whether it is to be restored or abolished.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 53: See also the remark of Galileo in a previous page of this volume, in the article headed "The Persecuted Learned."]

SINGULARITIES OBSERVED BY VARIOUS NATIONS IN THEIR REPASTS.

The Maldivian islanders eat alone. They retire into the most hidden parts of their houses; and they draw down the cloths that serve as blinds to their windows, that they may eat un.o.bserved. This custom probably arises from the savage, in early periods of society, concealing himself to eat: he fears that another, with as sharp an appet.i.te, but more strong than himself, should come and ravish his meal from him. The ideas of witchcraft are also widely spread among barbarians; and they are not a little fearful that some incantation may be thrown among their victuals.

In noticing the solitary meal of the Maldivian islander, another reason may be alleged for this misanthropical repast. They never will eat with any one who is inferior to them in birth, in riches, or dignity; and as it is a difficult matter to settle this equality, they are condemned to lead this unsocial life.

On the contrary, the islanders of the Philippines are remarkably social.

Whenever one of them finds himself without a companion to partake of his meal, he runs till he meets with one; and we are a.s.sured that, however keen his appet.i.te may be, he ventures not to satisfy it without a guest.[54]

Savages, says Montaigne, when they eat, "_S'essuyent les doigts aux cuisses, a la bourse des genitoires, et a la plante des pieds_." We cannot forbear exulting in the polished convenience of napkins!

The tables of the rich Chinese s.h.i.+ne with a beautiful varnish, and are covered with silk carpets very elegantly worked. They do not make use of plates, knives, and forks: every guest has two little ivory or ebony sticks, which he handles very adroitly.

The Otaheiteans, who are naturally social, and very gentle in their manners, feed separately from each other. At the hour of repast, the members of each family divide; two brothers, two sisters, and even husband and wife, father and mother, have each their respective basket.

They place themselves at the distance of two or three yards from each other; they turn their backs, and take their meal in profound silence.