To Contents
Volume 2
6
A HISTORY OF
THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE
WITH THEOLOGY
IN CHRISTENDOM
BY
ANDREW
LL. D.
LATE
PRESIDENT
(YALE),
AND
DICKSON
L. H. D.
PROFESSOR
WHITE
(COLUMBIA),
OF
HISTORY
PH.
AT
DK.
.
IN TWO
VOL.
Reproduced
VOLUMES
II
in electronic
1998
Bank of Wisdom
P.O. Box 926
Louisville, KY 40201
U.S.A.
1896
(JENA)
CORNELL
form
UNIVERSITY
COPYRIGHT,
18&l,
Reproduced
in electronic form
1998
Bank of Wisdom
P.O. Box 926
Louisville, KY 40201
U.S.A.
The purpose of the Bank of Wisdom
is to again make the United States the
Free Marketplace of Ideas that the
American Founding Fathers
originally meant this Nation to be.
Emmett F. Fields
CONTENTS
OF
THE
SECOVD
CHAPTER
FROM MIRACLES
VOLUME.
XIII.
TO MEDICINE.
PAGE
1. Tlte EarZv and Sacred Tkeories of Disease.
Naturalness
of the idea of sup&natural
intervention
ing disease
.
.
.
.
.
.
Prevalence of this idea in ancient civilizations .
Beginnings of a scientific theory of medicine
.
The twofold influence of Christianity
on the healing
in causing
.
.
.
art
.
and cur-
.
.
.
.
.
.
I
.
. I, 2
.
2
.
3>4
Tke Life of Xavier IIS a Typical Exam_z%‘e.
II. Growtlr of Legends of Healing.Growth of legends of miracles about the lives of great benefactors
of
humanity
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
5
Sketch of Xavier’s career .
.
.
.
,
.
.
.
.
5,6
Absence of miraculous accounts in his writings and those of his contemporaries
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
,
.
.
. 6-9
Direct evidence that Xavier wrought no miracles
,
.
. %I0
Growth of legends of miracles as shown in the early biographies
of him I 1-14
As shown in the canonization proceedings
.
.
.
.
.
14715
As shown in the later biographies
.
.
,
,
.
.
.
15-21
Naturalness
of these legends
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
21,22
III.
Tke Medireval
Mirades
of
Healing
check Medical
Science.
Character of the testimony regarding miracles .
.
Connection
of medieeval with pagan miracles
.
.
Their basis of fact
.
.
.
.
.
Various kinds of miraculous cures
.
.
Atmosphere
of supernaturalism
thrown about all cures
Influence of this atmosphere
on medical science
.
The Attribution
of Dis?ase to Satanic
kola’s back Scientific Eflort.
ln&ence.--”
Theological
theory as to the cause of disease
.
Influence of self-interest
on “ pastoral medicine ”
Development
of fetichism at Cologne and elsewhere
Other developments
of fetich cure
.
.
.
...
111
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
23
24
24,25
25926
.
.
.
Pastoral
.
.
.
.
.
26
26
Medicine
”
.
.
.
27
.
.
.
.
.
.
28
.
.
29
29?30
CONTENTS
iv
OF THE
SECOND
VOLUME.
V. Theological Oppositiolr to Anatomical Studies.
PAGE
31
Medieval belief in the unlawfulness of meddling with the bodies of the dead
Di&ction
objected to on the ground that “ the Church abhors the shedding of blood”
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
. 31
The decree of Coniface VIII and its results
.
.
.
.
.
32
VI.
VII.
flew BeginGngs
of Medid
Science.
Galen
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
. 33
.
. 33
Scanty development
of medical science in the Church
Among Jews and Mohaplmedans
.
.
.
.
.
.
33934
Promotion of medical science by various Christian laymen of the Middle
Ages .
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
343 35
By rare men of science
.
.
.
.
.
.
. 35
By various ecclesiastics
.
.
.
.
.
.
35936
Theological
Discouragement
of Medicine.
...
Opposition
to seeking cure from disease by natural means
Requirement
of ecclesiastical
advice before undertaking
medical
............
ment :
Charge of magic and Mohammedanism
against men of sciecce
Effect of ecclesiastical
opposition to medicine ......
........
The doctrine of signatures
The doctrine of exorcism ..........
........
Theological
opposition to surgery
.....
Development
of miracle and fetich cures.
...........
Fashion in pious cures
.......
Medicinal properties of sacred places
....
Theological
argument in favour of miraculous cures,
Prejudice against Jewish physicians ........
VIII,
IX.
Fetich Cures under Protestantism.The Roya
........
Luther’s theory of disease
...........
The royal touch
.........
Cures wrought by Charles II
............
By James II
...........
By William III
...........
By Queen Anne
By Louis XIV ............
.......
Universal acceptance of these miracles
The Scientific
Strurde
37
treat-
.
37
3S
38
38,39
39
40
40~41
42
42
43
~$4
Zbuih.
45.46
46
47
47
48
48
48
49
forAnatomy.
Occasional &coura&&nt
of medical science in the Middle Ages .
497 50
New impulse given by the revival of learning and the age of discovcry
. 50
Paracelsus and Mundinus.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
50
Vesalius, the founder of the modern science of anatomy.-His
career and
50-55
fate
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
X. TfieoZos$raZ Ojpositiorz to Inocdation,
Vaccination,
and
in Europe
.
.
the C;-e of An~ps-
thetics.
Theological
In America
opposition
.
.
to inoculation
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
55, ~6
56 57
CONTENTS
OF
THE
SECOND
VOLUME.
V
PAGE
Theological
opposition to vaccination
.
Recent hostility to vaccination
in England
.
In Canada, during the smallpox epidemic
Theological
opposition to the use of cocaine
.
To the use of quinine
.
.
.
.
Theological
opposition to the use of axesthetics
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
5% 59
59
60, bI
.
.
61
61,62
62,63
XI. Final breaking away of the Theological Theory in Medicine.
.
Changes incorporated
in the American Book of Common Prayer
Effect on the theological view of the growing knowledge of the relation
between imagination
and medicine
.
.
.
.
.
.
Effect of the discoveries in hypnotism
,
.
.
.
.
In bacteriology
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Relation between ascertained
truth and the “ages of faith”
.
CHAPTER
FROM
I.
II.
III.
FETICH
64
.
.
.
.
64
65
65
66
XIV.
TO
HYGIENE,
The Theologicab View of Epidemics and Sanifatim.
67
........
The recurrence
of great pestilences
.
Their early ascription to the wrath or malice of unseen powers
67968
63
......
Their real cause want of hygieni,c precaution
Theological
apotheosis of filth ........
69370
Sanction given to the sacred theory of pestilence
by Pope Gregory the
70
Great.
............
71
Modes of propitiating
the higher powers .......
72
.......
Modes of thwarting the powers of evil
.....
Persecution
of the Jews as Satan’s emissaries
72-74
.....
Persecution
of witches as Satan’s emissaries
74775
........
Case of the U&on’ at Milan
75-77
New developments
of fetichism.-The
blood of St. Jannarius at Naples 78-80
80,81
.
...
Appearance
of better methods in Italy.-In
Spain
Gradual Decay of Theological Views regarding Sarzitation.
Comparative
freedom of England from persecutions
for plague-bringing,
.....
in spite of her wretched sanitary condition
.....
Aid squght mainly through church services
........
Effects of the great fire in London
The jail fever ...........
.........
The work of John Howard
........
Plagues in the American colonies
In France .-The
......
great plague at Marseilles
......
Persistence of the old methods in Austria
In Scotland
...........
The Triumph of Sanitary Science.
Difficulty of reconciling
the theological
mulating facts
..........
Curious approaches
to a right theory
theory of pestilences
......
82
8~83
83
839 94
84
85
86
87
87,88
with accu-
8%89
8%90
.
vi
CONTENTS
OF
THE
SECOND
VOLUME.
PAGE
The law governing the relation of theology to disease
Recent victories of hygiene in all countries
.
.
In England.-Chadwick
and his fellows .
.
In France.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
IV.
.
.
.F
.
903 9’
9’?92
.
9% 93
The ReZafion of Sanifa y Science to ReZigion.
The progress of sanitary science not at the cost of religion
*
.
93
Illustration
from the policy of Napoleon III in France
.
.
.
93
Effect of proper sanitation on epidemics in the United States
.
*
94
Change in the attitude of the Church toward the cause and cure ot pes.
tileilce
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
94995
CHAPTER
FROM
“ DEMONIACAL
XV.
POSSESSION
”
TO
INSANITY.
c
I.
II.
TheoZogical Ideas of Lunacy and ifs Treatment.
.
.
.
g7
The struggle for the scientific treatment of the insane
.
.
.
.
The primitive ascription of insanity to evil spirits
.
97>98
.
.
Better Greek and Roman theories-madness
a disease
.
9% 99
.
gg-101
The Christian Church accepts the demoniacal theory of insanity
.
.
. IOI,IOP
Yet for a time uses mild methods for the insane
.
.
. 103, 104
Growth of the practice bf punishing the indwelling
demon
Two sources whence better things might have been hoped.-The
reasons
of their futility .
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
. 104,105
The growth of exorcism
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
. ICC109
Use of whipping and torture
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
. 109, I IO
The part of art and literature in making vivid to the common mind the
IIC-II2
idea of diabolic activity
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
. 112
The effe,cts of religious processions as a cure for mental disease
Exorcism of animals possessed of demons
.
.
.
.
.
. 113
.
. 114
Belief in the transformation
of human beings into animals
.
.
The doctrine of demoniacal possession in the Reformed Church
114, 115
The Beginnings of a HeaZthfuZ Scepticism.
. 116
Rivalry between Catholics and Protestants
in the casting out of devils
Increased belief in witchcraft during the period following the Reformation
.
.
.
,
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
. 117,118
.
.
: 118, 119
Increase of insanity during the witch persecutions
.
Attitude of physicians toward witchcraft
.
.
.
.
.
.
. 119
Religious hallucinations
of the insane
.
.
.
.
.
.
. 120
.
. 120
Theories as to the modes of diabolic entrance into the possessed
.
.
. 121
Influence of monastic life on the development
of insanity
Protests
against
the theological
view of insanity-Wier,
Montaigne,
Bekker
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
. 122,123
Last struggles
III.
of the old superstition
.
.
.
.
.
The l&al
Stwg$e and Victory of Sciewe.-Pine2 and Tuke.
Influence of French philosophy on the belief in demoniacal possession
Reactionary
influence of John Wesley
.
.
.
.
.
.
. I23
.
124, 125
. 125
CONTENTS
OF
THE
SECOND
VOLUME.
vii
Progress of scientific ideas in Prussia,
.
,
.
.
.
.
In Austria
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
In America
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
In South Germany
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
,
.
.
General indifference
toward the sufferings of madmen
.
The beginnings
of a more humane treatment
,
.
.
.
,
Jean Baptiste Pine1 .
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Improvement
in the treatment
of the insane in England.-William
Tuke .
.
.
.
.
.
The place of Pine1 and Tuke in history
CHAPTER
FROht
DIABOLISM
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
. 126
126,127
. 127
. 128
. 129
. 13~1
. 131
132,133
* 134
XVI.
TO HYSTERIA.
135
Survival of the belief in diabolic activity as the cause of such epidemics
Epidemics of hysteria in classical times
.
.
.
.
.
.
. 136
In the Middle Ages.
.
.
.
.
.
.
. 136, I37
The dancing mania .
.
.
.
.
.
.
. I373138
Inability of science during the fifteenth
century to cope with such diseases .
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
. I39
Cases of possession brought within the scope of medical research during
the sixteenth century.
.
.
.
.
.
.
. 139
.
Dying-out of this form of mental disease in northern Europe .
139
. 140
In Italy
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Epidemics of hysteria in the convents
.
.
.
.
. 140,141
The case of Martha Urossier
.
.
.
.
.
.
. 141, 142
.
.
.
. 143
Revival in France of belief in diabolic influence
The Ursulines of Loudun and Urbain Grandier
.
.
.
1439 I44
Possession among the Huguenots
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
. 145
.
In New England.-The
Salem witch persecution
.
145-154
At Paris.-Alleged
miracles at the grave of Archdeacon
Paris
154-156
In Germany.-Case
of Maria Renata Siinger
.
.
.
. 156
More recent outbreaks
.
.
.
.
.
.
,
.
.
. I57
I I. Bep-innings of He#fuZ Scepticism.
Outbreaks of hysteria in factories and hospitals
In places of religious excitement
.
The case at Moraine
.
.
.
.
Similar cases among Protestants
and in Africa
III.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
,
.
,
.
.
. 157,158
. 15% 159
. 159-162
.
. 163
Theological Suggestioxs of Compromise.-Fin&
Triumph of ttie Scientific View and Methods.
.
.
Successful dealings of medical science with mental diseases
,
Attempts to give a scientific turn to the theory of diabolic agency in disease.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Last great demonstration
of the old belief in England
.
. 165,
Final triumph of science in the latter half of the present century
Last echoes of the old belief
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
163
164
165
166
167
.
. ..
CONTENTS
Vlll
OF
THE
CHAPTER
SECOND
XVII.
FROM BABEL TO COMPARATIVE
I.
VOLUME.
PHILOLOGY.
The Sacred Theory in its First Form.
PAGE
Difference of the history of Comparative
Philology from that of other sciewes as regards the attitude of theologians
.
.
.
.
. 168
Curiosity of early man regarding the origin, the primitive
form, and the
diversity of language
.
.
.
.
.
,
.
. 168
The Hebrew answer to these questions
.
.
.
.
.
. 169, r7o
The legend of the Tower of Babel
.
.
.
.
. I7ovl71
The real reason for the building of towers by the Chaldeans
and the
causes of their ruin
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
. I72
Other legends of aconfusion
of tongues
.
.
.
.
. 172,I73
Influence upon Christendom
of the Hebrew legends
.
.
.
. 174
Lucretius’s theory of the origin of language
.
.
.
.
.
. I74
.
.
,
The teachings of the Church fathers on this subject
. I75
. 176
The controversy
as to the divine origin of the Hebrew vowel points
.
.
.
. I77
Attitude of the reformers toward this question
Of Catholic scholars.-Marini
.
.
.
.
.
.
. 177
Capellus and his adversaries
.
.
.
.
.
. 177. 178
The treatise of Danzius
.
,
.
.
.
.
. I787 179
II.
The Sacred
Theological
vealed
This
Them-y of Langungr in its Srcmd FOWZ.
theory that Hebrew was the primitive tongue,
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
divinely
.
theory supported
by all Christian scholars until the beginning
eighteenth
century
.
.
.
.
.
.
Dissent
of Prideaux
and Cotton Mather
.
.
.
.
Apparent strength of the sacred theory of language.
III.
IV.
re179, IS0
of the
.
.
.
ISO-IS7
. 187
rS8
Brenkinf down of the ThcoZogica,l View.
Reason fir the Church’s ready acceptance of the conclusions of comparative philology
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Beginnings of a scientific theory of language
.
.
.
.
.
.
Hottinger
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Leibnitz
.
.
.
193,
The collections of Catharine the Great, of Hervas, and of Adelung
Chaotic period in philology between
Leibnitz and the beginning of the
study of Sanskrit
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Illustration
from the successive editions of the EncyrZo@dia Britannica
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
. 192,
Triumph of the New Science.
.
.
Effect of the discovery of Sanskrit on the old theory
Attempts to discredit the new learning
.
.
.
General acceptance of the new theory
.
.
.
.
.
.
Destruction
of the belief that all created things were first named
Adam
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
,
Of the belief in the divine origin of letters
.
.
.
Attempts in England to support the old theory of language
1&g
r&9
189
190
191
191
I93
I93, 194
. 194
1q+,r95
by
195,196
. I97
19% I99
CONTENTS
OF
THE
SECOND
Progress of philological science in France
In Germany
.
.
.
.
.
In Great Britain
.
.
.
.
Recent absurd attempts to prove Hebrew
.
.
.
.
FROM
THE
DEAD
SEA
LEGENDS
.
.
.
,
.
.
the primitive
V. Sumrzary.
Gradual disappearance
of the old theories regarding
and writing
.
.
.
.
.
.
Full acceptance of the new theories by all Christian
The result to religion, and to the Bible
.
.
CHAPTER
VOLUME.
ix
.
.
.
tongue
the origin
.
.
scholars
.
.
,
.
,
.
199, 2oo
.
200
201,202
202,
203
of speech
.
.
.
.
204,205
206, 207
.
.
208
XVIII.
TO
COMPARATIVE
MYTHOLOGY.
Transformation
Illyfhs.
I. The Growth of Explanatory
Growth of myths to account for remarkable
appearances
in Naturemountains,
rocks, curiously marked stones, fossils, products of volcanic action
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
. 209-214
. 215-219
Myths of the transformation
of living beings into natural objects
. 219,220
Development
of the science of Comparative
Mythology
. * .
II. MedirPvaZ Growth of the Dead Sea Legends..
Description
of the Dead Sea
.
.
.
.
.
.
. 221,222
Impression made by its peculiar features on the early dwellers in Palestine
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
. 223
.
.
.
. 224
Reasons for selecting the Dead Sea myths for study
Naturalness
of the growth of legend regarding
the salt region of
Usdum
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
. 224,225
Universal belief in these legends
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
. 226
Concurrent testimony of early and medireval writers, Jewish and Christian,
respecting the existence of Lot’s wife as a “ pillar of salt,” and of the
other wonders of the Dead Sea.
.
.
.
.
! 226-233
Discrepancies
in the various accounts
and theological
explanations
of
them .
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
,
.
.
233
.
.
Theological
arguments
respecting
the statue of Lot’s wife
. 234
.
. 234,235
.
Growth of the legend in the sixteenth century .
III.
Post-Reformation
of a HeaZthfcZ
Cuk’nafion
of the Dead
.Yea Legends.-Beginnings
Scepticism.
.
Popularization
of the older legends at the Reformation
.
Growth of new myths among scholars
.
.
.
Signs of scepticism among travellers near the end of the sixteenth
Effort of Quaresmio to check this tendency
.
.
.
Of Eugene Roger
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Of Wed&us
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Influence of these teachings
.
.
.
.
.
.
Renewed scepticism-the
seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries
.
Efforts of Briemle and Masius in support of the old myths
Their influence.
.
.
.
.
I
.
.
.
.
.
.
, 236
236, 237
238
century
.
.
.
.
.
.
. 239
. 240
. 240
. 241
242,243
243,244
. 245
CONTENTS
X
OF
THE
SECOND
and of Volney .
.
.
.
thought on the Dead Sea legends
The travels of Mariti
Influence of scientific
eenth century
.
.
.
Reactionary
efforts of Chateaubriand
Investigations
of the naturalist
.
IV.
.
of De Saulcy
.
.
.
.
.
.
Lynch
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Canon
investigations
.
Tristram’s
Mgr. Mislin’s
protests
The work of Schaff
Acceptance
.
.
against
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
century.-Ritter’s
.
of the scientific
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
view by leaders
.
of theologians
to religion
.
in this field
.
in accepting
.
.
.
CHAPTER
FROM
LEVITICUS
.
.
Dr. Geikie’s ascription of the myths to the Arabs
Mgr. Haussmann
de Wandelburg
and his rejection
Service
of the scientific
the conclusions
.
.
Opposition
of leaders
By the Church
fathers
In ecclesiastical
POLITICAL
and secular
legislation
Hostility
of the pulpit
made in behalf
.
.
Of the canon law
.
Evil results of the prohibition
Efforts
to induce
especially
.
sometimes
the Church
.
.
of a distinction
.
.
.
.
.
.
of the Jews
.
.
.
.
.
.
of loans at interest
to change
.
.
.
her position
between
ztsury and interest
Retreat of the Church, Protestant ad CathoZic.
Sir Robert Filmer’s attack on the old doctrine
Retreat of the Protestant
Church in Holland
.
In
Germany
.and America.
.
.
.
.
Aristotle
Theological
evasions of the rule
.
.
.
.
Attitude of the Reformers
toward the taking of interest
Struggle in England for recognition
of the right to accept
Invention
.
256, 257
.
.
.
257
258
258
’
259
259,260
. 261
262
view
.
.
263
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
264
264
ECONOMY.
by the Old and New Testaments
.
Exception
254-256
XIX.
TO
of thought,
of the practice
253
253
of science
.
I. Origin ana Progressof ZZostiIity to Loans at Interest.
Universal belief in the sin of loaning money at interest
The taking of interest among the Greeks and Remans
Condemnation
.
in the Church
rationalism
.
.
View.
.
.
.
252,
.
.
.
.
.
- 247
248,249
ver-
.
.
.
.
Sea region
.
.
249,250
250-252
.
the growing
and Osborn
246,247
.
of the Dead
PAGE
246
.
.
.
.
.
during the eight-
Theological Eforts
at Compromise.Triumph
of the Scientijc
Attempts to reconcile scientific factsCwith the Dead Sea legends
Van de Velde’s
II.
.
.
,
.
report
,
of the nineteenth
Of the Due de Luynes.-Lartet’s
Summary of the investigations
dict
.
Seelzen
Of Dr. Robinson
.
.
The expedition of Lieutenant
The investigations
VOLUME.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
interest
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
265
265
266
2Gb-268
. 268
. 268
. 2%
2% 270
270,271
.
. 272
272,273
.
274,275
275
276
276
277
CONTENTS
OF
THE
SECOND
xi
VOLUME.
PAGE
Difficulties in the way of compromise in the Catholic Church
Failure of such attempts in France
.
.
.
.
.
Theoretical
condemnation
of usury in Italy
.
.
.
Disregard
of all restrictions
.
in practice
Attempts of Escobar and Liguori
the teachings of the Church
.
to reconcile
.
.
.
.
Montesquieu’s
attack on the old theory
.
.
Encyclical
of Benedict XIV permitting
the taking
Similar
Final
decision
retreat
Curious
of the Inquisition
of the Catholic
dealings
.
Church
of theology
FROM
I.
THE
DIVINE
ture.-The
The
Working
The
.
law of unity
.
of King
.
James’s
.
.
Judaus
.
.
Hilary
.
of Poitiers
the Great
Vain attempts
.
of modern
.
Erasmus
.
.
to check
Bede.-Savonarola
Methods
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Catholic
belief
.
in the inspiration
Refl’nnings
interpretation
280
.
.
281
278
279
with
.
.
.
.
.
280
282,
283
.
.
263
.
288
.
288
284
285-287
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
1’
.
.
.
.
.
.
interpretations
.
.
.
.
Church
.
of the Slavonic
.
.
by Lorenzo
in the infallibility
.
of the Vulgate
at the beginning
.
.
.
.
schools
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
of the eighteenth
.
289,290
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
29i
291
292
292, 293
. 293
.
.
.
.
,
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
290
294
295
296
297
298
298, 299
*
.
.
3*
301
302
Valla
.
303
303-305
ofthe sacred
.
.
.
.
.
*
.
.
.
.
Scriptures
.
.
of sacred litera-
of the Bible
.
in the Reformed
Opposition in Russia to the revision
Sir Isaac Newton as a commentator
Scriptural
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
‘.
.
.
_
.
.
CRITICISM.
.
.
.
.
for the first time employed
.
of scholasticism
.
.
.
Influence of the Reformation
on the belief
books.-Luther
and Melanchthon
Development
.
the flood of allegorical
criticism
.
.
.
.
.
and Jerome
.
Augustine.
Gregory
.
.
.
rabbinical
Justin Martyr and Clement of Alexandria
Occult significance
of numbers
.
Origen
.
.
interpretation
.
.
.
fields
HIGHER
translation
.
of these laws seen in the great
law of allegorical
Philo
.
.
.
The law of wills and causes
The law of inerrancy
Hostility to the revision
II.
.
.
in other
TO THE
.
the Septuagint
.
.
XX.
ORACLES
law of its origin
concerning
2;7,278
.
.
.
.
.
of interest
The 02~‘~ lntqbretation.
Character of the great sacred books of the world
.
General laws governing the development
and influence
Legends
.
of interest
.
.
.
.
with publicreconomy
CHAPTER
.
.
.
.
at Rome
.
the taking
.
century
305-307
.
.
.
.
.
307
308
309
310
311
of Scienti& Interpretation.
Theological
beliefs
The book
of Genesis
regarding
.
the Pentateuch
.
.
.
.
.
,
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
311
312
xii
CONTENTS
OF
THE
SECOND
VOLUME.
PAGE
.
.
.
Doubt thrown on the sacred theory by Aben Ezra .
. 3’3
By Carlstadt and Maes
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
* 313
Influence of the discovery that the Isidorian Decretals were forgeries
* 314
That the writings
ascribed
to Dionysius
the Areopagite
were spurious .
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
. 315,316
Hobbes and La Peyrere
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
. 317
Spinoza
,
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
. 317,318
.
Progress of biblical criticism in France.-Richard
Simon
. 319,320
. 320,321
Le Clerc .
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
. 322
Bishop Lowth .
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Astruc
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
. 322,323
Eichhorn’s application
of the “ higher criticism ” to biblical research
. 323
- ...
Isenbiehl
. __ ....
.
. 324
........
Herder
325,326
......
Alexander Geddes
.
. 326
Opposition to the higher criticism in Germany
. 327,323
........
Hupfeld
.
. 323
......
Vatke and Reuss
.
* 329
........
Kuenen
. 330, 331
.......
Wellhausen
. 331,332
III.
IV.
The Continued Growth of Scientijc lnteevpretation.
Progress of the higher criticism in Germany and Holland
......
Opposition to it in England
......
At the University of Oxford
..........
Pusey
..........
Bentley
..........
Wolf.
.......
Niebuhr and Arnold
..........
Milman
.......
Thirlwall and Grote.
The publication
of Essays and Reviews, and the storm
book ...........
.
.
.
raised
* 333
333,334
* 335
. 336
. 337.333
.
. 339
. 339
.
340
.
.34r
by the
. 342-348
The CZos0s;n.gStruggle.
......
Colenso’s work on the Pentateuch
........
The persecution
of him
......
Bishop Wilberforce’s
part in it.
-Dean Stanley’s ..........
.........
Bishop Thirlwall’s
.......
Results of Colenso’s work
.......
Sanday’s Bampton Lectures
......
Keble College and Lzlx Mtindi
Progress of biblical criticism among the dissenters
.........
In France.-Renan
......
In the Roman Catholic Church
.....
The encyclical letter of Pope Leo XIII
......
In America.-Theodore
Parker
Apparent strength of the old theory of inspiration
.....
Real strength of the new movement
*
.
’
.
.
.
*
.
...
.
.
.
.
...
.
.
349,350
35o-353
354,355
* 355
. 356
356,357
* 357
358,359
. 360
360-362
362,363
364-366
366,367
36% 369
* 370
COPiTENTS
OF
THE
SECOND
VOLUME.
...
x111
V. Victovv
PAGB
, of< the Scientific and Literary .Wefhd.r.
Confirmation
of the conclnsions
of the higher criticism by Assyriology
and Egyptology .
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
. 370-376
Light thrown upon Hebrew religion by the translation
of the sacred
books of the East
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
. 377
The work of the Rev. Dr. Mills
378
The influence of Persian thought.The influence of Indian thought.-Light
thrown by the study of Brahmanism and Buddhism
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
379
The work of Fathers Hut and Gabet
.
.
.
. 379, 360
Discovery
that Buddha
himself had beeu canonized
as a Christian
saint .
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
. 381-383
Similarity between the ideas and legends of Buddhism and those of Christianity
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
. 383,384
.
. 385
The application
of the higher cr;ti&m
to the New Testament
The English “Revised
Version” of 1E81
.
.
.
.
. 386 387
.
.
.
. 388
Studies on the formation of the canon of Scripture
.
.
.
. 389
Recognition
of the laws governing its development
.
Change in the spirit of the controversy
over the higher criticism
. 390-392
VI. Reconstructive Force of Scientijc Criticism.
Development
of a scientific atmosphere
during the last three centuries
. 393
.4ction of modern science in reconstruction
of religious truth .
. 393,394
Change wrought by it in the conception
of a sacred literature.
. 394
.
Of the Divine Power.-Of
man.-Of
the world at large .
. 395
Of our Bible
.
.
.
_
.
.
.
.
.
xe> 396
THE
WARFARE
WITH
OF SCIENCE
THEOLOGY.
CHAPTER
PROM
I. THE
EARLY
MIRACLES
AND
XIII.
TO
SACRED
MEDlC~iVE.
THEORIES
OF DISEASE.
NOTHING
in the evolution
of human thought
appears
more inevitable than the idea of supernatural
intervention
in
The causes of disease are so
producing and curing disease.
intricate that they are reached only after ages of scientific
labour.
In those periods when man sees everywhere
miracle
he attributes
all things which he
and nowhere law ,-when
can not understand
to a will like his own,-he
naturally
ascribes his diseases either to the wrath of a good being or
to the malice of an evil being.
This idea underlies the connection
of the priestly class
with,the healing art: a connection
of which we have survivals among rude tribes in all parts of the world, and which
is seen in nearly every ancient
civilization-especially
in
the powers over disease claimed in Egypt by the priests of
Osiris and Isis, in Assyria by the priests of Gibil, in Greece
by the priests of AZsculapius, and in Judea by the priests and
prophets of Jahveh.
In Egypt there is evidence, reaching back to a very early
period, that the sick were often regarded as afflicted or possessed by demons ; the same belief comes constantly before
us in the great religions of India and China; and, as regards
Chaldea, the Assyrian
tablets
recovered
in recent years,
while revealing
the source of so many myths and legends
transmitted to the modern world through the book of Gene29
I
2
FROM
MIRACLES
TO
MEDICINE.
sis, show especially this idea of the healing of diseases by the.
casting out of devils.
A similar theory was elaborated
in
Naturally, then, the Old Testament,
so precious in
Persia.
showing the evolution of religious
and moral truth among
men, attributes such diseases as the leprosy of Miriam and
Uzziah, the boils .of Job, the dysentery
of Jehoram,
the
withered hand of Jeroboam,
the fatal illness of Asa, and
many other ills,‘to the wrath of God or the malice of Satan ;
while, in the New Testament,
such examples as the woman
(’ bound by Satan,” the rebuke of the fever, the casting out
of the devil which was dumb, the healing of the person
whom “the devil ofttimes casteth into the fire “-of
which
case one of the greatest
modern physicians
remarks that
never was there a truer description
of epilepsy-and
various
other episodes, show this same inevitable
mode of thought
as a refracting
medium through
which the teachings
and
doings of the Great Physician were revealed to future generations.
In Greece, though this idea of an occult evil agency in
producing
bodily ills appeared
at an early period, there
also came the first beginnings,
so far as we know, of a really
scientific
theory of medicine.
Five hundred years before
Christ, in the bloom period of thought-the
period of 2EschyIus, Phidias, Pericles,
Socrates,
and Plato-appeared
Hippocrates, one of the greatest names in history.
Quietly but
thoroughly
he broke away from the old tradition, developed
scientific thought, and laid the foundations of medical science
upon experience,
observation,
and reason so deeply and
broadly that his teaching remains to this hour among the
most precious possessions of our race.
His thought was passed on to the School of Alexandria,
and there medical science was developed yet further, especially by such men as Herophilus
and Erasistratus.
Under
their lead studies in human anatomy began by dissection;
the old prejudice which had weighed so long upon science,
preventing
that method of anatomical investigation
without
which there can be no real results, was cast aside apparently
forever.*
* For extended statements regarding
nations generally,
see Sprengel, His&ire
medicine in Egypt, Judea, and Eastern
de la fi~e’&cine, and Haeser ; and for
THE
EARLY
AND
SACRED
THEORIES
OF
DISEASE.
3
But with the coming in of Christianity
a great new chain
of events was set in motion which modified this development
The influence of Christianity
on the healmost profoundly.
ing art was twofold : there was first a blessed impulse-the
example, ideals, and spirit of Jesus of
thought, aspiration,
Nazareth.
This spirit, then poured into the world, flowed
down through the ages, promoting
self-sacrifice
for the sick
Through
all those succeeding
centuries,
and wretched.
even through the rudest, hospitals and infirmaries sprang up
Of these were the Eastern estabalong this blessed stream.
lishments for the cure of the sick at the earliest Christian
periods, the Infirmary of Monte Cassino and the Hbtel-Dieu
at Lyons in the sixth century, the HGtel-Dieu
at Paris in
the seventh, and the myriad refuges for the sick and suffering which sprang up in every part of Europe
during the
following centuries.
Vitalized
by this stream, all medieval
growths of mercy bloomed luxuriantly.
To say nothing
of those at an earlier period, we have in the time of the
Crusades great charitable
organizations
like the Order of
more succinct
accounts,
Baas, GescAich?te a’er Me&&,
pp, 15-29; also Isensee;
de la M&hze,
chap. i. For the effort in Egyptian medicine to deal with demons and witches, see H&rich
Brugsch, Die Aezy$toIogie,
Leipsic, 1891, p. 77; and for references
to the Papyrus
E&s,
etc., pp. 155, 407,
and following.
For fear of dissection and prejudices against it in Egypt, like those
in medireval Europe, see Maspero and Sayce, Dazern of Civilization, p. 216. For
the derivation
of priestly medicine
in Egypt, see Baas, pp. 16, 22. For the
fame of Egyptian medicine at Rome, see Sharpe, History of,!?gy$t, vol. ii, pp. 151,
184. For Assyria, see especially
George Smith in Delitzsch’s
German translation, p. 34, and F. Delitzsch’s appendix, p. 27. On the cheapness
and commonness of miracles of healing in antiquity,
see Sharpe, quoting St. Jerome, vol. ii,
pp. 276, 277. As to the influence of Chaldean
ideas of magic and disease on
neighbouring
nations, see Maspero and Sayce, as above, pp. 782, 783. As to the
freedom of ancient Greece from the idea of demoniacal
intervention
in disease, see
Lecky, Hisfory of European XoraZs, vol. i, p, 404 and note.
But, on the other
hand, see reference in Homer to diseases caused by a “demon.”
For the evolution of medicine before and after Hippocrates,
see Sprengel.
For a good summing
up of the work of Hippocrates,
see Baas, p. 201. For the necessary passage of medicine in its early stages under priestly control, see Cabanis, T&e RevoZ~tion of Medical Science, London, 1806, chap. ii. On Jewish ideas regarding demons, and their
relation to sickness, see Toy, Jzldaism
apta’ Christianity,
Boston, 1891, pp. 166 et
sag. For avoidance
of dissections of human subjects even by Galen and his disciples, see Maurice Albert, .Les i?!fPdecins Grecs d Rome, Paris, 1894, chap. xi. For
Herophilus,
Erasistratus,
and the School of Alexandria,
see Sprengel, vol. i, pp.
alsoFrCdault, X&ire
433, 434 et seq.
4
FROM
MIRACLES
TO
MEDICINE.
St. John of Jerusalem,
and thenceforward
every means of
bringing the spirit of Jesus to help afflicted humanity.
So,
too, through all those ages we have a succession
of men
and women devoting themselves
to works of mercy, culminating during modern times in saints like Vincent de Paul,
Francke, Howard, Elizabeth Fry, Florence Nightingale,
and
Muhlenberg.
But while this vast influence, poured forth from the heart
of the Founder
of Christianity,
streamed
through century
after century, inspiring
every development
of mercy, there
came from those who organized the Church which bears his
name, and from those who afterward developed and directed
it, another stream of influence-a
theology
drawn partly
from prehistoric
conceptions
of unseen powers, partly from
ideas developed
in the earliest
historic
nations, but especially from the letter of the Hebrew and Christian sacred
books.
The theology
developed
out of our sacred literature in
relation to the cure of disease was mainly twofold : first,
there was a new and strong evolution of the old idea that
physical
disease is produced
by the wrath of God or the
malice of Satan, or by a combination of both, which theology
was especially
called in to explain;
secondly,
there were
evolved theories of miraculous methods of cure, based upon
modes of appeasing the Divine anger, or of thwarting
Satanic malice.
Along both these streams of influence, one arising in the
life of Jesus, and the other in the reasonings
of theologians,
legends of miracles grew luxuriantly.
It would be utterly
unphilosophical
to attribute
these as a whole to conscious
fraud.
Whatever
part priestcraft
may have taken afterward
in sundry discreditable
developments
of them, the mass of
miraculous
legends, century after century, grew up mainly
in good faith, and as naturally as elms along water-courses
or flowers upon the prairie.
GROWTH
II.
GROWTH
OF
LEGENDS
OF
LEGENDS
XAVIER
AS
A
OF
OF
HEALING.
HEALING.-THE
TYPICAL
5
LIFE
OF
EXAMPLE.
Legends of miracles have thus grown about the lives of
all great benefactors
of humanity in early ages, and about
Throughout
human history the lives
saints and devotees.
almost
without
exception,
have been
of such personages,
accompanied
or followed by a literature
in which legends
of miraculous
powers form a very important
part-a
part
constantly increasing
until a different
mode of looking at
nature and of weighing
testimony
causes miracles to dis_
While
modern
thought
holds
the testimony to the
appear.
vast mass of such legends in all ages as worthless, it is very
widely acknowledged
that great and gifted beings who endow the earth with higher religious ideas, gaining the deepest hold upon the hearts and minds of multitudes, may at
times exercise
such influence upon those about them that
the sick in mind or body are helped or healed.
We have within the modern period very many examples
which enable us to study the evolution of legendary
miracles. Out of these I will select but one, which is chosen because it is the life of one of the most noble and devoted men
in the history of humanity, one whose biography
is before
the world with its most minute details-in
his own letters, in
the letters of his associates, in contemporary
histories, and in
a multitude of biographies : this man is St. Francis Xavier.
From these sources I draw the facts now to be given, but
none of them are of Protestant
origin;
every source from
which I shall draw is Catholic
and Roman, and published
under the sanction of the Church.
Born a Spanish noble, Xavier
at an early age cast aside
all ordinary aims, devoted himself to study, was rapidly advanced to a professorship
at Paris, and in this position was
rapidly winning a commanding
influence, when he came under the sway of another Spaniard even greater, though less
brilliantly endowed, than himself-Ignatius
Loyola, founder
of the Society of Jesus.
The result was that the young professor sacrificed
the brilliant
career on which he had entered at the French capital, went to the far East as a simple
FROM
6
MIRACLES
TO
MEDICINE.
missionary,
and there devoted his remaining
years to redeeming the lowest and most wretched of our race.
Among the various tribes, first in lower India and afterward in Japan, he wrought untiringly-toiling
through village after village, collecting
the natives by the sound of a
hand-bell, tryin g to teach them the simplest Christian formulas; and thus he brought myriads of them to a nominal confession of the Christian
faith.
After twelve years of such
efforts, seeking new conquests for religion, he sacrificed
his
life on the desert island of San Chan.
During his career as a missionary he wrote great numbers of letters, which were preserved
and have since been
published ; and these, with the letters of his contemporaries,
exhibit clearly all the features of his life.
His own writings
are very minute, and enable us to follow him fully.
No account of a miracle wrought by him appears either in his own
letters or in any contemporary
document.*
At the outside,
but two or three things occurred in his whole life, as exhibited so fully by himself and his contemporaries,
for which
the most earnest devotee could claim anything like Divine
interposition ; and these are such as may be read in the
letters
of very many fervent
missionaries,
Protestant
as
For example,
in the beginning
of his
well as Catholic.
career, during a journey in Europe with an ambassador, one
of the servants in fording a stream got into deep water and
Xavier tells us that the ambaswas in danger of drowning.
sador prayed very earnestly, and that the man finalIy strugBut within sixty years after his
gled out of the stream.
death, at his canonization,
and by various biographers,
this
had been magnified into a miracle, and appears in the various histories dressed out in glowing colours.
Xavier
tells
us that the ambassador
prayed for the safety of the young
man; but his biographers
tell us that it was Xavier who
prayed, and finally, by the later writers, Xavier
is repre* This statement
was denied
with much explosive emphasis by a writer in the
and October, 1691, but he brought no fact to supI may perhaps be allowed to remind the reverend writer that
port this denial.
since the days of Pascal, whose eminence in the Church he will hardly dispute,
the bare assertion even of a Jesuit father against established facts needs some support other than mere scurrility.
Cnthlic WorZdfor September
GROWTH
OF LEGENDS
OF HEALING.
7
sented as lifting horse and rider out of the stream by a
clearly supernatural
act.
Still another claim to miracle is based upon his arriving at
Lisbon and finding his great colleague, Simon Rodriguez,
ill
Xavier informs us in a very simple way that Roof fever.
driguez was so overjoyed
to see him that the fever did not
This is entirely similar to the cure which Martin
return.
Melanchthon
had
Luther wrought
upon hlelanchthon.
broken down and was supposed to be dying, when his joy
at the long-delayed
visit of Luther brought him to his feet
again, after which he lived for many years.
Again, it is related that Xavier,
finding a poor native
woman very ill, baptized her, saying over her the prayers of
the Church, and she recovered.
Two or three occurrences
like these form the whole
basis for the miraculous
account,
so far as Xavier’s
own
writings are concerned.
Of miracles in the ordinary sense of the word there is in
these letters of his no mention.
Though
he writes of his
doings with especial
detail, taking evident pains to note
everything
which he thought a sign of Divine encouragement, he says nothing of his performing
miracles, and, evidently knows nothing of them.
This is clearly not due to
his unwillingness
to make known any token of’ Divine
As we have seen, he is very prompt to report. anyfavour.
thing which may be considered
an answer to prayer or an
evidence of the power of religious
means to improve the
bodily or spiritual health of those to whom he was sent.
Nor do the letters of his associates
show knovvledge of
any miracles
wrought
by him.
His brother
missionaries,
who were in constant and loyal fellowship with him, make
no allusions to them in their communications
with each
other or with their brethren in Europe.
Of this fact we have many striking evidences.
Various
collections of letters from the Jesuit missionaries
in India
and the East generally, during the years of Xavier’s activity,
were published, and in not one of these letters written during Xavier’s
lifetime
appears
any account
of a miracle
wrought by him.
As typical of these collections
we may
take perhaps the most noted of all, that whioh was pub-
8
FROM
MIRACLES
TO MEDICINE.
lished about twenty years after Xavier’s
death by a Jesuit
father, Emanuel Acosta.
The letters given in it were written by Xavier
and his
associates
not only from Goa, which was the focus of all
missionary effort and the centre of all knowledge
regarding
their work in the East, but from all other important
points
in the great field:
The first of them were written during
the saint’s lifetime, but, though filled with every sort of detail regarding
missionary
life and work, they say nothing
regarding any miracles by Xavier.
The same is true of various other similar collections published during the sixteenth
and seventeenth
centuries.
In
not one of them does any mention of a miracle by Xavier
appear in a letter from India or the East contemporary
with
him.
This silence regarding
his miracles was clearly not due
to any “ evil heart of unbelief.”
On the contrary, these good
missionary fathers were prompt to record the slightest occurrence which they thought evidence of the Divine favour:
it is indeed touching
to see how eagerly they grasp at the
most trivial things which could be thus construed.
Their ample faith was fully shown.
One of them, in
Acosta’s collection, sends a report that an illuminated
cross
had been recently seen in the heavens;
another, that devils
had been cast out of the natives by the use of holy water;
another, that various cases of disease had been helped and
even healed by baptism ; and sundry others sent reports that
the blind and dumb had been restored, and that even lepers
had been cleansed
by the proper use of the rites of the
Church ; but to Xavier no miracles are imputed by his associates during his life or during several years after his death.
On the contrary, we find his own statements as to his personal limitations, and the difficulties arising from them, fully
It is interesting,
for exconfirmed by his brother workers.
ample, in view of the claim afterward
made that the saint
>was divinely
endowed for his mission with the “gift of
to note in these letters confirmation
of Xavier’s
tongues,”
own statement utterly disproving
the existence of any such
Divine gift, and detailing
the difficulties which he encountered from his want of knowing various languages, and the
GROWTH
&
I
OF LEGENDS
OF HEALING.
9
hard labour which he underwent
in learning the elements
of the Japanese tongue.
Until about ten years after Xavier’s
death, then, as
Emanuel Acosta’s publication
shows, the letters of the missionaries continued without any indication of miracles perThough,
as we shall see presently,
formed by the saint.
abundant legends had already begun to grow elsewhere, not
one word regarding
these miracles
came as yet from the
country which, according
to later accounts accepted
and
sanctioned by the Church, was at this very period filled with
miracles;
not the slightest indication of them from the men
who were supposed to be in the very thick of these miraculous manifestations.
There is
But this negative evidence
is by no means all.
also positive
evidence-direct
testimony
from the Jesuit
order itself-that
Xavier wrought no miracles.
For not only did neither Xavier nor his co-workers know
anything of the mighty works afterward
attributed
to him,
but the highest contemporary
authority on the whole subject, a man in the closest correspondence
with those who
knew most about the saint, a member of the Society of Jesus
in the highest standing and one of its accepted
historians,
not only expressly tells us that Xavier wrought no miracles,
but gives the reasons why he wrought none.
This man was Joseph Acosta, a provincial
of the Jesuit
order, its visitor in Aragon,
superior
at Valladolid,
and
finally rector
of the University
of Salamanca.
In 1571,
nineteen years after Xavier’s death, Acosta devoted himself
to writing a work mainly concerning
the conversion
of the
Indies, and in this he refers especially and with the greatest
reverence
to Xavier,
holding him up as an ideal and his
work as an example.
But on the satne page with this tribute to the great missionary Acosta goes on to discuss the reasons why progress
in the world’s conversion
is not so rapid as in the early apostolic times, and says that an especial cause why apostolic
preaching could no longer produce apostolic results “ lies in
the missionaries
themselves,
because there is now no power
of working miracles.”
He then asks, “ Why should our age be so completely
c
FROM
IO
MIRACLES
TO
MEDICINE.
destitute- of them ? ” This question
he answers at great
length, and one of his main contentions
is that in early apestolic times illiterate
men had to convert the learned of the
world, whereas in modern times the case is reversed, learned
men being sent to convert the illiterate ; and hence that 6‘in
the early times miracles
were necessary,
but in our time
they are not.”
This statement
and argument
refer, as we have seen,
directly to Xavier
by name, and to the period covered
by
his activity and that of the other great missionpries
of his
time.
That
the Jesuit
order and the Church
at large
thought this work of Acosta trustworthy
is proved by the
fact that it was published at Salamanca
a few years after it
was written, and republished
afterward
with ecclesiastical
sanction in France.*
* The work of Joseph Acosta is in the Cornell University Library, its title
being as follows : De Natura
Novi Orbis Z&i duo et De PromuZgatione
Eva%_
ge/ii spud Barbaros,
sive De Procwanda
Zndorum
Salute, Zibri sex, autore
Joseph0
Acosta, presbytero
Societatis Jem.
I. H. S.
SaCmantim,
spud Guillelmum FoqueZ, LVDLXXXZX.
For the passages cited directly contradicting
the
working of miracles by Xavier and his associates, see lib. ii, cap. ix, of which the
title runs, Cz4r Miracula
in Conversione gentium non&ml
nunc, ut o&n, a Ch&ti
pmdicator&u,
especially
pp. 242-245 ; also lib. ii, cap. viii, pp. 237 et seq. For
a passage which shows that Xavier was not then at all credited with “ the miracu-
Since writing the above, my attenlous gift of tongues,” see lib. i, cap. vii, p. 173.
tion has been called to the alleged miraculous preservation
of Xavier’s body claimed
in sundry letters contemporary
with its disinterment
at San Chan and reinterment
at Coa.
There
is no reason
why this preservation
need
in itself
be doubted,
and
Such exceptional
preservation
of
no reason why it should be counted miraculous.
bodies has been common enough in all ages, and, alas for the claims of the Church,
One of the most
quite as common of pagans or Protestants
as of good Catholics.
famous cases is that of the
whose exhumation
at Rome,
fair Roman maiden, Julia, daughter of Claudius, over
in 1485, such ado was made by the sceptical scholars
Contemporary
observers
tell us enthusiastically
that she was
of the Renaissance.
“the bloom of youth still upon her cheeks,”
very beautiful, perfectly preserved,
and exhaling a “ sweet odour ” ; but this enthusiasm was SO little to the taste of
Only the other
Pope Innocent VIII
that he had her reburied
secretly by night.
day, in June of the year 1895, there was unearthed
at Stade,
“perfectly
preserved”
body of a soldier of the eighth century.
in Hanover,
the
So, too, I might
mention the bodies preserved
at the church of St. Thomas at Strasburg,
the Cathedral of Bremen, and elsewhere
during hundreds of years past
;
beneath
also the
cases of “ adipoceration
” in various American
cemeteries,
which never grow less
wonderfnl by repetition from mouth to mouth and in the public prints.
But, while
such preservation
is not incredible nor even strange, there is much reason why precisely in the case of a saint
like
St. Francis
Xavier
the evidence
for it should
be
GROWTH
Nothing
the evolution
OF
LEGENDS
shows better
of miraculous
received with especial caution.
them to believe and proclaim
OF
ing the bodies
What
the
regarding
of many other saints,
by the Church
II
than the sequel
how completely
accounts
depends
upon the intouching
fidelity
an adored
thought more meritorious than careful statement,
the natural course of things, is seen, for example,
venerated
HEALING.
especially
for his beautiful
leader
of disciples
faith is
and miracle more probable than
in similar pious accounts
regard-
that of St. Carlo
and
may lead
in a time when
charitable
Borromeo,
life.
And
so justly
yet
any one
looking at the relics of various saints, especially those of St. Carlo, preserved with
such tender care in the crypt of Milan Cathedr$,
will see that they have shared
the common
fate, being
either mummified
in all cases, so far as my observation
can be induced
Augustine’s
to believe
declaration
early Church
or reduced
has extended.
and testify
in a somewhat
that the tlesh of the peacock,
was considered
a bird
to skeletons ; and this is true
What even a great theologian
somewhat
ruptible.
The saint declares that he tested
Dei, xxi, c. 4, under the passage beginning
compare the testimony of the pious author
similar
matter,
is seen in St.
which in antiquity
supernaturally
and in the
endowed,
is incor-
it and found it so (see the De Civitate
With this we may
Q&s enim Deur).
of Sir John Mandeville’s
Traver’s, that
iron floats upon the Dead Sea while feathers sink in it, and that he would not have
So, too, testimony to the “ sweet odour ” diffused
believed this had he not seen it.
by the exhumed
highly wrought
remains
feeling
of the saint seems to indicate
of disciples
standing
by-the
feeling
same
rather
feeling
than fact-the
which led those
who visited St. Simon Stylites on his heap of ordure, and other hermits unwashed
and living in filth, to dwell upon the delicious “ odour of sanctity ” pervading the
air.
In point, perhaps, is Louis Veuillot’s
idealization
of the “pa~fum de IZome,”
in face of the fact, to which the present writer and thousands of others can testify,
that under papal rule Rome was materially one of the most filthy cities in Christendom.
For the case of Julia, see the contemporary
letter printed by Janitschek,
GeseZZsc&zft der Renaissance
in ZtaZien, p. 120, note 167 ; also Infessura, Diarium
Rom. Urbis, in Muratori, tom. iii, pt. 2, col. 1192, 1193, and elsewhere ; also Symonds,
For the case at Stade, see press
Renaissance in ZtnZy : Age of the Despots, p. 22.
The copy of Emanuel
dispatch from Berlin in newspapers
of June 24, 25, 1895.
Acosta I have mainly used is that in the Royal Library at Munich, De Japoniris
rebus epistohrun
Zibri iiii, item recngniti ; et in La&urn
ex Hispanic0 sermoze colt-
versi, Dilingce,
5
MDLXXI.
I have since obtained
and
used
the work now in the
library of Cornell
University,
being the letters and commentary
published
by
Emanuel Acosta and attached to Maffei’s book on the History of the Indies, published at Antwerp in 1685.
For the first beginnings
of miracles wrought by Xavier,
Of
as given in the letters of the missionaries,
see that of Almeida, lib. ii, p. 183.
other collections, or selections from collections,
of letters which fail to give any indication of miracles wrought by Xavier during his life, see Wytfliet and Magin, Histoire UniverseZZe des Andes OccidentaZes et OrientaZes, et de la Conversion
Douay,
1611.
Though
several
letters
of Xavier
and his
des Indiens,
fellow-missionaries
are
given, dated at the very period of his alleged miracles, not a trace of miracles
Also Epistoh japonice de mur’torum in vaviis ZnsuZis GentiGum
appears in these.
ad Christi jidem Conversione, Lovanii, 1570.
These letters were written‘by
Xavier
and his companions from the East Indies and Japan, and cover the years from 1549
to 1564.
Though
these refer frequently
wrought by him in any of them written
to Xavier,
during
there is no mention
his lifetime.
of a miracle
12
Ii
!
i’
FROM
MIRACLES
TO MEDICINE.
tellectual
atmosphere
of any iand and time, and how independent it is of fact.
For, shortly after Xavier’s
heroic and beautiful death in
1552, stories of miracles
wrought by him began to appear.
At first they were few and feeble ; and two years later Melchior Nunez, Provincial
of the Jesuits
in the Portuguese
dominions, with all the means at his coymand,
and a correspondence
extending
throughout
Eastern
Asia, had been
able to hear of but three.
These were entirely from hearsay.
First, John Deyro said he knew that Xavier
had the
gift of prophecy ; but, unfortunately,
Xavier himself had reprimanded and cast off Deyro for untruthfulness
and cheatery.
Secondly,
it was reported
vaguely that at Cape Comorin
many persons affirmed that Xavier
had raised a man from
the dead.
Thirdly,
Father Pablo de Santa F6 had heard
that in Japan Xavier
had restored
sight to a blind man.
This seems a feeble beginning, but little by little the stories
grew, and in 1555 De Quadros, Provincial of the Jesuits in
Ethiopia, had heard of nine miracles, and asserted that Xa.
vier had healed the sick and cast out devils.
The next year,
being four years after Xavier’s
death, King John III of
Portugal, a very devout man, directed
his viceroy Barreto
to draw up and transmit
to him an authentic
account of
Xavier’s
miracles,
urging him eipecially
to do the work
“ with zeal and speedily.”
We can well imagine what treasures of grace an obsequious
viceroy,
only too anxious to
please a devout king, could bring together by means of the
hearsay of ignorant, cornpliant natives through all the little
towns of Portuguese
India.
But the letters of the missionaries who had been co-workers or immediate
successors of Xavier
in his Eastern field
were still silent as regards any miracles by him, and they
remained silent for nearly ten years.
In the collection
of
letters published by Emanuel Acosta and others no hint at
any miracles by him is given, until at last, in 1562, fully ten
years after Xavier’s death, the first faint beginnings
of these
legends appear in them.
At that time the Jesuit Almeida, writing at great length
to the brethren, stated that he had found a pious woman who
believed that a book left behind by Xavier
had healed sick
GROWTH
j
/,
I
,’ ~
I
t
1
1”
OF LEGENDS
OF HEALING.
13
folk when it was laid upon them, and that he had met an old
man who preserved
a whip left by the saint which, when
properly applied to the sjck, had been found good both for
their bodies and their souls.
From these and other small
beginnings grew, always luxuriant and sometimes beautiful,
the vast mass of legends which we shall see hereafter.
This growth
was affectionately
garnered
by the more
zealous and less critical brethren in Europe until it had become enormous;
but it appears to have been thought of little
value by those best able to judge.
For when, in 1562, Julius Gabriel Eugubinus
delivered a
solemn oration on the condition and glory of the Church, before the papal legates and other fathers assembled
at the
Council of Trent, while he alluded to a multitude of things
showing the Divine favour, there was not the remotest allusion to the vast multitude of miracles which, according
to
the legends, had been so profusely lavished on the faithful
during many years, and which, if they had actually occurred,
formed an argument of prodigious value in behalf of the special claims of the Church.
The same complete
absence of knowledge of any such
favours vouchsafed to the Church, or at least of any belief in
them, appears in that great Council of Trent among the
Certainly there, if anywhere, one might
fathers themselves.
on the Roman theory expect Divine illumination
in a matter
of this kind.
The presence of the Holy Spirit in the midst
of it was especially claimed, and yet its members, with all
their spiritual as well as material advantages
for knowing
what had been going on in the Church during the previous
thirty years, and with Xavier’s
own friend and colleague,
Laynez, present to inform them, show not the slightest
sign
of any suspicion of Xavier’s
miracles.
We have the letters
of Julius Gabriel to the foremost of these fathers assembled
at Trent, from 1557 onward for a considerable
time, and
we have also a multitude of letters written from the Council
by bishops, cardinals, and even by the Pope himself, discussing all sorts of Church affairs, and in not one of these is there
evidence of the remotest suspicion that any of these reports,
which they must have heard, regarding
Xavier’s
miracles,
were worthy of mention.
FROM
14
MIRACLES
TO
MEDICINE.
Here, too, comes additional supplementary
testimony of
much significance.
With these orations and letters, Eugubinus gives a Latin translation of a letter, 1‘on religious affairs
in the Indies,” written by a Jesuit father twenty years after
Though the letter came from a field very
Xavier’s death.
distant from that in which Xavier
laboured, it was sure,
among the general tokens of Divine favour to the Church
and to the order, on which it dwelt, to have alluded to miracles wrought by Xavier had there been the slightest ground
for believing in them ; but no such allusion appears.*
So, too, when in 1588, thirty-six
years after Xavier’s
death, the Jesuit father Maffei, who had been especially conversant with Xavier’s
career in the East, published his Nistory of India, though he gave a biography of Xavier which
shows fervent admiration
for his subject,
he dwelt very
lightly on the alleged miracles.
But the evolution of miraculous legends still went on. Six years later, in, 1594, Father
Tursellinus
published his Life of Xaaier, and in this appears
to have made the first large use of the information collected
by the Portuguese
viceroy and the more zealous brethren.
This work shows a vast increase in the number of miracles
over those given by all sources together
up to that time.
Xavier is represented
as not only curing the sick, but casting
out devils, stilling the tempest, raising the dead, and performing miracles of every sort.
In 1622 came the canonization
proceedings
at Rome.
Among the speeches made in the presence of Pope Gregory
XV, supporting
the claims of Xavier to saintship, the most
important
was by Cardinal Monte.
In this the orator selects out ten great miracles from those performed by Xavier
during his lifetime and describes them minutely.
He insists
that on a certain occasion Xavier, by the sign of the cross,
made sea-water fresh, so that his fellow-passengers
and the
crew could drink it; that he healed the sick and raised the
dead in various places; brought back a lost boat to his ship;
was on one occasion’lifted
from the earth bodily and trans*
For the work referred
to, see JuZii
Zaarum, etc., Ziibri duo [et] Epistoh
6y,?ero, etc., Venetiis,
1569.
Ga&ieZii Eugu6ini
de rebus Indicis
The E;aistob
begins
& puodam
at fol. 44.
orationurn
et episto-
Sorietatis Jesu _&es-
GROWTH
.
OF LEGENDS
OF HEALING.
.
‘5
figured before the bystanders;
and that, to punish a blaspheming
town, he caused an earthquake
and buried the
offenders in cinders, from a volcano : this was afterward
still
more highly developed,
and the saint was represented
in
engravings
as calling down fire from heaven and thus destroying the town.
The most curious miracle of all is the eighth on the carRegarding
this he states that, Xavier
having
dinal’s list.
during one of his voyages lost overboard
a crucifix, it was
restored to him after he had reached the shore by a crab.
The cardinal also dwelt on miracles performed
by Xavier’s relics after his death, the most original being that sundry lamps placed before the image of the saint and filled
with holy water burned as if filled with oil.
This latter account appears to have deeply impressed the
Pope, for in the Bull of Canonization
issued by virtue of his
power of teaching the universal Church infallibly in all matters pertaining to faith and morals, His Holiness dwells especially upon the miracle of the lamp filled with holy water
and burning before Xavier’s image.
Xavier
having been made a saint, many other L&es of
him appeared, and, as a rule, each surpassed its predecessor
in the multitude of miracles.
In 1622 appeared that corn.
piled and published under the sanction of Father Vitelleschi,
and in it not only are new miracles increased, but some old
ones are greatly
improved.
One example
will suffice to
show the process.
In his edition of 1596, Tursellinus
had
told how, Xavier one day needing money, and having asked
Vellio, one of his friends, to let him have some, Vellio gave
him the key of a safe containing
thirty thousand
gold
Xavier
took three hundred and returned the key
pieces.
Vellio, finding only three hundred
to Vellio ; whereupon
pieces gone, reproached
Xavier for not taking more, saying
that he had expected to give him half of all that the strong
box contained.
Xavier,
touched
by this generosity,
told
Vellio that the time of his death should be made known to
him, that he might have opportunity
to repent of his sins and
prepare for eternity.
But twenty-six years later the Lzjre of
Xavier published under the sanction of Vitelleschi,
giving
the story, says that Vellio on opening the safe found that aZZ
16
.
FROM
MIRACLES
TO
MEDICINE.
his money remained as he had left it, and that noze at aZl had
disappeared ; in fact, that there had been a miraculous restiOn his blaming Xavier for not taking the money,
tution.
Xavier declares to Vellio that not only shall he be apprised
of the moment of his death, but that the box shall always be
full of money.
Still later biographers
improved the account
further,
declaring
that Xavier
promised
Vellio
that the
strong box should always contain money sufficient for all his
In that warm and uncritical
atmosphere
this and
needs.
other legends grew rapidly, obedient to much the same laws
which govern the evolution of fairy tales.*
In 1682, one hundred
and thirty years after Xavier’s
death, appeared his biography
by Father Bouhours;
and
this became a classic.
In it the old miracles of all kinds
were enormously
multiplied,
and many new ones given.
Miracles
few and small in Tursellinus
became
many and
In Tursellinus,
Xavier during his life
great in Bouhours.
saves one person from drowning, in Bouhours he saves durXavier during his life raises
ing his life three ; in Tursellinus,
four persons from the dead, in Bouhours
fourteen;
in Tursellinus there is one miraculous
supply of water, in Bouhours three; in Tursellinus
there is no miraculous
draught
of fishes, in Bouhours there is one; in Tursellinus,
Xavier is
transfigured
twice, in Bouhours
five times: and so through
a long series of miracles which, in the earlier lives appearing
either not at all or in very moderate form, are greatly increased and enlarged by Tursellinus,
and finally enormously
amplified and multiplied by Father Bouhours.
* The writer in the Cat&&c WorZa’, already mentioned,
rather rashly asserts
The reverend
that there is no such Life of Xavier as that I have above quoted.
Jesuit father has evidently
glanced over the bibliographies
of Carayon
and De
Backer, and, not finding it there under the name of Vitelleschi, has spared himself
It is sufficient to say that the book may be seen by him in the
further trouble.
Its full title is as follows:
Compendia dcZZa Vita
library of Cornell University.
deZ S. P. Fmncesco
Xaverio deZZa Compagnia di GieszC, Canonizato cm S. Ignatio
Composto, e
Fondatore deZZ’ istessa ReZigione daZZa Santif~ di N. S. Gregorio XV.
dnto in Zuce pw
ordine
deZZa Comp. di Gies&.
Licenza de’ Superiori.
de2 Reverendiss.
In
Venetia,
My critic
edition of Torsellino (Tursellinus),
ferent book, giving in its preface
besides Torsellino.
P. Mutio
MDCXXZl,
ViteZZeschi Preposito
Appresso
Antonio
GeneraZe
PineZZi.
Con
hazards a guess that the book may be a later
It is entirely a difbut here again he is wrong.
a list of sources comprising
eleven authorities
GROWTH
/I
I
I 3
,
I
,
:’
i
OF
LEGENDS
OF
HEALING.
17
And here it must be borne in mind that Bouhours, writing ninety years after Tursellinus,
could not have had access
to any new sources.
Xavier
had been dead one hundred
and thirty years, and of course all the natives upon whom
he had wrought his miracles, and their children and grandIt can not then be claimed that Bouchildren, were gone.
hours had the advantage of any new witnesses, nor could he
have had anything new in the way of contemporary
writings; for, as we have seen, the missionaries
of Xavier’s time
wrote nothing
regarding
his miracles,
and certainly
the
ignorant natives of India and Japan did not commit any acNevertheless,
the miracles
count of his miracles to writing.
of healing given in Bouhours were more numerous and brilliant than ever.
But there was far more than this.
Although during the lifetime of Xavier there is neither in his
own writings nor in any contemporary
account any assertion
of a resurrection
from the dead wrought by him, we find
that shortly after his death stories of such resurrections
A simple statement
of the growth of
began to appear.
these may throw some light on the evolution of miracuAt first it was affirmed that some
lous accounts generally.
people at Cape Comorin said that he had raised one person ;
then it was said that there were two persons;
then in various authors-Emanuel
Acosta, in his commentaries
written
as an afterthought
nearly twenty years after Xavier’s death,
De Quadros, and others-the
story wavers between
one
and two cases ; finally, in the time of Tursellinus,
four cases
In 1622, at the canonization
proceedhad been developed.
ings, three were mentioned ; but by the time of Father Bouhours there were fourteen-all
raised from the dead by
Xavier himself during his lifetime-and
the name, place, and
circumstances
are given with much detail in each case.*
* The writer in the CatMic WorZa’, already referred to, has based an attack
here upon a misconception-I
will not call it a deliberate misrepresentation-of
his
own by stating that these resurrections
occurred after Xavier’s death, and were
due to his intercession
or the use of his relics.
This statement of the Jesuit father
I take
is utterly without foundation,
as a simple reference to Bouhours will show.
the liberty of commending
to his attention
The Life of St. I+an& Xavier, by
Father Dominic Bouhours, translated
by James Dryden,
Dublin, 1838. For examples of raising the dead by the saint during his Zifeetime, see pp. 69, 82, 93, III,
218,307, 316, 3x--fourteen
cases in all.
.
18
FROM
MIRACLES
TO MEDICINE.
It seems to have been felt as somewhat
strange at first
that Xavier had never alluded to any of these wonderful
miracles;
but ere long a subsidiary legend was developed,
to the effect that one of the brethren asked him one day if
he had raised the dead, whereat he blushed deeply and
cried out against the idea, saying : “And
so I am said to
have raised the dead ! What a misleading man I am ! Some
men brought
a youth to me just as if he were dead, who,
when I commanded
him to arise in the name of Christ,
straightway
arose.”
Noteworthy
is the evolution of other miracles.
Tursellinus, writing in 1594, tells us that on the voyage from Goa
to Malacca, Xavier having left the ship and gone upon an
island, was afterward found by the persons sent in search of
him so deeply absorbed in prayer as to be unmindful of all
things about him.
But in the next century
Father
Bouhours develops the story as follows:
“ The servants found
the man of God raised from the ground into the air, his eyes
fixed upon heaven, and rays of light about his countenance.”
Instructive,
also, is a comparison
between the successive
accounts of his noted miracle among the Badages at Travancore, in 1544.
Xavier in his letters makes no reference
to
anything extraordinary
; and Emanuel Acosta, in 1571, dethrew himself into the midst of
clares simply that “Xavier
the Christians, that reverencing
him they might spare the
The inevitable evolution of the miraculous goes on ;
rest.”
and twenty years later Tursellinus
tells us that, at the onslaught of the Badages, “they could not endure the majesty
of his countenance
and the splendour and rays which issued
from his eyes, and out of reverence
for him they spared the
The process of incubation
still goes on during
others.”
ninety years more, and then comes Father Bouhours’s
account. Having given Xavier’s prayer on the battlefield, Bouhours goes on to say that the saint, crucifix in hand, rushed
at the head of the people toward the plain where the enemy
voice, ‘ I
was marching, and “said to them in a threatening
forbid you in the name of the living God to advance farther,
and on His part command you to return in the way you
These few words cast a terror into the minds of
came.’
those soldiers who were at the head of the army ; they re-
GROWTH
OF LEGENDS
OF HEALING.
I9
mained confounded and without motion.
They who marched
afterward, seeing that the foremost did not advance, asked
the reason of it. The answer was returned, from the front
ranks that they had before their eyes an unkno’wn person
habited in black, of more than human stature, of terrible
aspect, and darting fire from his eyes. . . . They were seized
with amazement
at the sight, and all of them fled in precipitate confusion.”
Curious, too, is the after-growth
of the miracle of the
In
its
first
form Xavier lost the
crab restoring the crucifix.
crucifix in the sea, and the earlier biographers
dwell on the
sorrow which he showed in consequence;
but the later historians declare that the saint threw the crucifix into the sea
in order to still a tempest, and that, after his safe getting to
land, a crab brought
it to him on the shore.
In this form
we find it among illustrations
of books of devotion in the
next century.
But perhaps the best illustration
of this evolution
of
Xavier’s miracles is to be found in the growth of another
instructive
because
it grew
legend ; and it is especially
luxuriantly despite the fact that it was utterly contradicted
in all parts of Xavier’s writings as well as in the letters of
his associates
and in the work of the Jesuit father, Joseph
Acosta.
Throughout
his letters, from first to last, Xavier
constantly dwells upon his difficulties with the various languages
of the different tribes among whom he went.
He tells us
how he surmounted
these difficulties : sometimes
by learning just enough of a language
to translate
into it some of
the main Church formulas;
sometimes
by getting the help
of others to patch together
some pious teachings
to be
learned by rote ; sometimes
by employing
interpreters
;
and sometimes by a mixture of various dialects, and even by
signs.
On one occasion he tells us that a very serious difficulty arose, and that his voyage to China was delayed because, among other things, the interpreter
he had engaged
had failed to meet him.
In various Lives which appeared between the time of his
death and his canonization
this difficulty is much dwelt
upon; but during the canonization
proceedings
at Rome, in
20
FROM
MIRACLES
TO MEDICINE.
_
the speeches then made, and finally in the papal bull, great
stress was laid upon the fact that Xavier possessed t/zegif
of tongues. Jt was declared
that he spoke to the various
tribes with ease in their own languages.
This legend of
Xavier’s miraculous gift of tongues was especially mentioned
in the papal bull, and was solemnly given forth by the pontiff as an infallible
statement
to be believed by the universal Church.
Gregory XV having been prevented by death
from issuing the B&Z of Canonization, it was finally issued by
Urban VIII ; and there is much food for reflection in the fact
that the same Pope who punished Galileo, and was determined that the Inquisition
should not allow the world to
believe that the earth revolves about the sun, thus solemnly
ordered the world, under pain of damnation, to believe in
Xavier’s
miracles, including his “gift of tongues,” and the
return of the crucifix by the pious crab.
But the legend
was developed still further : Father Bouhours tells us, “ The
holy man spoke very well the language of those barbarians
without having learned it, and had no need of an interpreter
when he instructed.”
And, finally, in our own time, the
Rev. Father Coleridge,
speaking
of the saint among the
excellently,
natives, says, “He could speak the language
though he had never learned it.”
In the early biography,
Tursellinus
writes:
“ Nothing
was a greater impediment to him than his ignorance of the
Japanese
tongues, * for, ever and anon, when some uncouth
expression
offended their fastidious
and delicate ears, the
But
awkward speech of Francis was a cause of laughter.”
Father Bouhours, a century later, writing of Xavier at the
in the afternoon ‘to the
same period, says, “ He preached
Japanese
in their language,
but so naturally and with so
much ease that he could not be taken for a foreigner.”
And finally, in 1872, Father Coleridge, of the Society of
Jesus, speaking
of Xavier
at this time, says, “ He spoke
freely, flowingly, elegantly, as if he had lived in Japan all
his life.”
Nor was even this sufficient:
to make the legend complete, it was finally declared that, when Xavier
addressed
the natives of various tribes, each heard the sermon in his
own language in which he was born.
GROWTH
OF LEGENDS
OF HEALING.
21
All this, as we have seen, directly
contradicts
not only
the plain statements of Xavier himself, and various incidental
testimonies in the letters of his associates, but the explicit
declaration
of Father Joseph Acosta.
The latter historian
dwells especially on the labour which Xavier was obliged to
bestow on the study of the Japanese
and other languages,
and says, u Even if he had been endowed with the apostolic
gift of tongues, he could not have spread more widely the
glory of Christ.” *
It is hardly necessary
to attribute
to the orators and
biographers generally a conscious attempt to deceive.
The
simple fact is, that as a rule they thought, spoke, and wrote
in obedience to the natural laws which govern the luxuriant
growth of myth and legend in the warm atmosphere of love
and devotion which constantly arises about great religious
leaders in times when men have little or no knowledge of
natural law, when there is little care for scientific evidence,
and when he who believes most is thought
most meritorious.?
* For the evolution of the miracles of Xavier, see his Letters, with Life, pubIndirarum
Zibri
lished by Leon Pages, Paris, 1855 ; also Maffei, Historiarum
xvi, Venice, 1589 ; also the lives by Tursellinus,
various editions, beginning
with
that of 1594 ; Vitelleschi,
1622 : Bouhours,
1682 ; Massei, second edition, 1682
(Rome), and others ; Bartoli, Baltimore,
1868 ; Coleridge,
1872.
In addition
to
these, I have compared, for a more extended discussion of this subject hereafter, a
very great number of editions of these and other biographies
of the saint, with
speeches at the canonization,
the bull of Gregory XV, various books of devotion,
and a multitude of special writings, some of them in manuscript,
upon the glories
of the saint, including
a large mass of material in the Royal Library at Munich
and in the British Museum.
I have relied entirely upon Catholic authors, and
have not thought it worth while to consult any Protestant
author.
The illustration
of the miracle of the crucifix and crab in its final form is given in La DPvotion de
Dix Yena’vedif d Z’Honneur de St. F’an~ois Xavier, Bruxelles, 1699, Fig. 24 : the
pious crab is represented
as presenting
the crucifix which by a journey of forty
leagues he has brought from the depths of the ocean to Xavier, who walks upon the
shore. The book is in the Cornell University
Library.
For the letter of King
John to Barreto, see Leon Pages’s Lettres de St. Franfois Xavier, Paris, 1855, vol.
ii, p. 465. For the miracle among the Badages, compare Tursellinus,
lib. ii, c. x,
p. 16, with Bouhours, Dryden’s translation,
pp. 146, 147. For the miracle of the gift
of tongues, in its higher development,
see Bouhours, p. 285. and Coleridge, vol. i,
pp. 172 and 208 ; and as to Xavier’s own account, see Coleridge, vol. i, pp. 151,
154, and vol. ii, p. 551.
t Instances can be given of the same evolution of miraculous legend in our own
time. To say nothing of the sacred fountain at La Salette, which preserves its
22
FROM
MIRACLES
TO
MEDICINE.
These examples will serve to illustrate the process which
in thousands of cases has gone on from the earliest days of
healing powers in spite of the fact that the miracle which gave rise to them has
twice been pronounced fraudulent by the French courts, and to pass without notice
a multitude of others, not only in Catholic but in Protestant countries, the present
writer may allude to one which in the year 1893 came under his own observation.
On arriving in St. Petersburg to begin an official residencC there, his attention was
arrested by various portraits of a priest of the Russo-Greek Church; they were
displayed in shop windows and held au honoured place in many private dwellings. These portraits ranged from lifelike photographs, which showed a plain,
shrewd, kindly face, to those which were idealized until they bore a strong resemOn making in_
blance to the conventional representations of Jesus of Nazareth.
quiries, the writer found that these portraits represented Father Ivan, of Cronstadt,
a priest noted for his good deeds, and.very widely believed to be endowed with the
power of working miracles.
One day, in one of the most brilliant reception rooms of the northern capital,
the subject of Father Ivan’s miracles having been introduced, a gentleman in very
high social position and entirely trustworthy spoke as follows : “ There is something
very surprising about these miracles.
I am slow to believe in them, but I know the
following to be a fact : The late Metropolitan Archbishop of St. Petersburg loved
quiet, and was very averse to anything which could possibly cause scandal. Hearing of Father Ivan’s miracles, he summoned him to his presence and solemnly commanded him to abstain from all the things which had given rise to his reported
miracles, and with this injunction dismissed him. Hardly had the priest left the
room when the archbishop was struck with blindness and remained in this condition until the priest returned and removed his blindness by intercessory prayers.”
When the present writer asked the person giving this account if he directly knew
these facts, he replied that he was, of course, not present when the miracle was
wrought, but that he had the facts immediately from persons who knew all the
parties concerned and were cognizant directly of the circumstances of the case.
Some time afterward, the present writer being at an afternoon reception at one
of the greater embassies, the same subject was touched upon, when an eminent general spoke as follows : “I am not inclined to believe in miracles, in fact am rather
He
sceptical, but the proofs of those wrought by Father Ivan are overwhelming.”
then went on to say that the late Metropolitan Archbishop was a man who loved
quiet and disliked scandal ; that on this account he had summoned Father Ivan to
his palace and ordered him to put an end to the conduct which had caused the
reports concerning his miraculous powers, and then, with a wave of the arm, had
dismissed him. The priest left the room, and from that moment the archbishop’s
arm was paralyzed, and it remained so until the penitent prelate summoned the
There
priest again, by whose prayers the arm was restored to its former usefulness.
was present at the time another person besides the writer who had heard the previous statement as to the blindness of the archbishop, and on their both questioning the general if he were sure that the archbishop’s arm was paralyzed, as stated,
he declared that he could not doubt it, as he had it directly from persons entirely
trustworthy, who were cognizant of all the facts.
Some time later, the present writer, having an interview with the most eminent
lay authority in the Greek Church, a functionary whose duties had brought him.into
THE
MEDIEVAL
MIRACLES
the Church until a very recent
raculous cures became the rule
throughout
Christendom.
III.
THE
MEDLBVAL
MIRACLES
MEDICAL
OF
HEALING.
23
Everywhere
miperiod.
rather than the exception
OF
HEALING
CHECK
SCIENCE.
So it was that, throughout
antiquity, during the early
history of the Church, throughout
the Middle Ages, and indeed down to a comparatively
recent period, testimony to
miraculous
interpositions
which would now be laughed at
by a schoolboy
was accepted
by the leaders of thought.
St. Augustine
was certainly
one of the strongest
minds in
the early Church, and yet we find him mentioning,
with
much seriousness, a story that sundry innkeepers of his time
put a drug into cheese which metamorphosed
travellers into
domestic animals, and asserting
that the peacock
is so favoured by the Almighty that its flesh will not decay, and that
he has tested it and knows this to be a fact.
With such a
disposition regarding the wildest stories, it is not surprising
that the assertion of St. Gregory of Nazianzen, during the
second century,
as to the cures wrought by the martyrs
Cosmo and Damian, was echoed from all parts of Europe
until every hamlet had its miracle-working
saint or relic.
The literature
of these miracles is simply endless.
To
take our own ancestors alone, no one can read the Ecclesiastical History of Bede, or Abbot Samson’s Miracles of St. Edmzmi, or the accounts given by Eadmer and Osbern of the
miracles of St. Dunstan, or the long lists of those wrought
by Thomas 8. Becket, or by any other in the army of Engalmost daily contact with the late archbishop, asked him which of these stories was
correct.
This gentleman
answered immediately
: I’ Neither ; I saw the archbishop
constantly,
and no such event occurred : he was never paralyzed and never blind.”
The same gentleman
then went on to say that, in his belief, Father Ivan had
shown remarkable
powers in healing the sick, and the greatest charity in relieving
the distressed.
It was made clearly evident that Father Ivan is a saintlike man,
devoted to the needy and distressed
and exercising
an enormous
influence over
them-an
influence so great that crowds await him whenever he visits the capital.
In the atmosphere
of Russian devotion myths and legends grow luxuriantly
about
him, nor is belief in him confined to the peasant class.
In the autumn of 1894 he
was summoned
to the bedside of the Emperor Alexander III.
Unfortunately
for
the peace of Europe, his intercession
at that time proved unavailing.
24
FROM
MIRACLES
TO
MEDICINE.
lish saints, without
seeing the perfect
naturalness
of this
growth.
This evolution of miracle in all parts of Europe
came out of a vast preceding
series of beliefs, extending not
merely through the early Church but far back into paganism. Just as formerly patients were cured in the temples of
_Bsculapius, so they were cured in the Middle Ages, and so
they are cured now at the shrines of saints.
Just as the
ancient miracles were solemnly attested by votive tablets,
giving names, dates, and details, and these tablets hung
before the images of the gods, so the mediaeval miracles
were attested by similar tablets hung before the images of
the saints ; and so they are attested to-day by similar tablets
hung before the images of Our Lady of La Salette or of
Lourdes.
Just as faith in such miracles persisted, in spite of
the small percentage
of cures at those ancient places of healing, so faith persists to-day, despite the fact that in at least
ninety per cent of the cases at Lourdes prayers prove unavailing.
As a rule, the miracles of the sacred books were
taken as models, and each of those given by the sacred
chroniclers
was repeated during the early ages of the Church
and through the medieval
period with endless variations of
circumstance,
but still with curious fidelity to the original
tY Pee
It should be especially kept in mind that, while the vast
majority of these were doubtless due to the myth-making
faculty and to that development
of legends which always
goes on in ages ignorant of the relation between physical
causes and effects, some of the miracles of healing had unWe in modern times have seen
doubtedly some basis in fact,
too many cures performed through influences exercised upon
the imagination, such as those of the Jansenists
at the Cemetery of St. Medard, of the Ultramontanes
at La Salette and
Lourdes, of the Russian Father Ivan at St. Petersburg,
and
of various Protestant
sects at Old Orchard
and elsewhere,
as well as at sundry camp meetings,
to doubt that some
cures, more or less permanent,
were wrought by sainted
personages in the early Church and throughout
the Middle
Ages.*
* For the story of travellers converted into domestic animals, see St, Augustine,
De Civ. Dei, liber xviii, chaps. xvii, xviii, in Migne, tom. xii, p. 574. For Gregory
THE
MEDLEVAL
MIRACLES
OF
HEALING.
25
There are undoubtedly
serious lesions which yield to
profound emotion and vigorous exertion born of persuasion,
The wonderful
power of the
confidence, or excitement.
mind over the body is known to every observant student.
Mr. Herbert Spencer dwells upon the fact that intense feeling or passion may bring out great muscular force.
Dr.
Berdoe reminds us that “ a gouty man who has long hobbled
about on his crutch, finds his legs and power to run with
them if pursued by a wild bull ” ; and that “ the feeblest invalid, under the influence of delirium or other strong excitement, will astonish her nurse by the sudden accession of
strength.” *
But miraculous cures were not ascribed to persons meredeveloped
by the early
Church
growth,
1Y. Another
mainly from germs in our sacred books, took shape in miracles wrought by streams, by pools of water, and especially
by relics.
Here, too, the old types persisted, and just as we
_
of Nasianzen
and the similarity of these Christian cures in general character to
those wrought in the temples of 2%culapius,
see Sprengel, vol. ii, pp. 145, 146.
For the miracles wrought at the shrine of St. Edmund, see Samsonis A&da& Opus
de Miraculis
Sanr~i &dmzmdi, in the Master of the Rolls’ series, pas&n, but especially chaps. xiv and xix for miracles of healing wrought on those who drank out
of the saint’s cup.
For the mighty works of St. Dunstan, see the Mirac. San&
Dunrtani, awtorc Eadmero and au&ore Osberno, in the Master of the Rolls’ series.
As to Becket, see the Mareerials for z%e History of Z%amas Beck&, in the same
series, and especially the lists of miracles-the
mere index of them in the first volume requires thirteen octave pages.
For St. Martin of Tours, see the Guizot collection of French Chronicles.
For miracle and shrine cures chronicled by Bede, see his
EcclcsiasticaZNistory,~passim, but especially from page IIO to page 267. For similarity between the ancient custom of allowing invalids to sleep in the temples of Serapis
and the medieval custom of having them sleep in the church of St. Antony of Padua
and other churches, see Meyer, Aberglaube des MitteZaZters, Base& 1884, chap. iv.
For the effect of “the vivid belief in supernatural
action which attaches itself to the
tombs of the saints,” etc., as “ a psychic agent of great value,” see Littrd, M&de&e
et Mhdcins, p. 131. For the Jansenist miracles at Paris, see La V&it/ des M&acles OpbrpSpar i’1nierression
de M. de Paris, par Montgeron,
Vtrecht,
1737, and
especially the cases of Mary Anne Couronneau,
Philippe Sergent, and Gautier de
For some very thoughtful
remarks as to the worthlessness
of the testiPezenas.
mony to miracles presented
during the canonization
proceedings
at Rome, see
Maury, Lbgendes Pieuses, pp. 4-7.
* For the citation in the text, as well as for a brief but remarkably
valuable
discussion of the power of the mind over the body in disease, see Dr. Berdoe’s
Medic& View of the Mirach
at Lourdes, in The Nifzeteenth CentuTl for Octoher, 1895.
26
FROM
MIRACLES
TO MEDICINE.
find holy and healing wells, pools, and streams in all other
ancient religions, so we find in the evolution of our own such
examples as Naaman the Syrian cured of leprosy by bathing
in the river Jordan, the blind man restored to sight by washing in the pool of Siloam, and the healing of those who
touched the bones of Elisha, the shadow of St. Peter, or the
handkerchief
of St. Paul.
St. Cyril, St. Ambrose,
St. Augustine,
and other great
fathers of the early Church, sanctioned the belief that similar
efficacy was to be found in the relics of the saints of their
time; hence, St. Ambrose
declared
that “ the precepts of
medicine are contrary
to celestial
science,
watching,
and
prayer,” and we find this statement
reiterated from time to
time throughout
the Middle Ages.
From this idea was
evolved that fetichism which we shall see for ages standing
in the way of medical science.
Theology,
developed in accordance
with this idea, threw
about all cures, even those which resulted from scientific
effort, an atmosphere
of supernaturalism.
The vividness
with which the accounts of miracles
in the sacred books
were realized in the early Church continued the idea of miraculous intervention
throughout
the Middle Ages.
The
testimony
of the great fathers of the Church to the continuance of miracles
is overwhelming;
but everything
shows
that they so fully expected miracles on the slightest occasion
as to require nothing which in these days would be regarded
as adequate evidence.
In this atmosphere,of
theologic
thought medical science
was at once checked.
The School of Alexandria,
under the
influence first of Jews and later of Christians, both permeated with Oriental
ideas, and taking
into their theory of
medicine demons and miracles, soon enveloped
everything
In the Byzantine
Empire of the East the
in mysticism.
same cause produced
the same effect; the evolution of ascertained truth in medicine, begun by Hippocrates
and continued by Herophilus,
seemed lost forever.
Medical
science, trying to advance,
was like a ship becalmed
in the
Sargasso
Sea: both the atmosphere
about it and the medium through
which it must move resisted all progress.
Instead of reliance
upon observation,
experience,
experi-
“PASTORAL
MEDICINE”
ment, and thought,
ural agencies.*
IV. THE
ATTRIBUTION
-“PASTORAL
..
attention
CHECKS
was turned
OF DISEASE
MEDICINE”
SCIENTIFIC
CHECKS
TO
EFFORT.
toward
SATANIC
SCIENTIFIC
27
supernat-
INFLUENCE.
EFFORT.
Especially prejudicial
to a true development
of medical
science among the first Christians was their attribution
of
disease to diabolic influence.
As we have seen, this idea
had come from far, and, having prevailed in Chaldea, Egypt,
and Persia, had naturally entered into the sacred books of
Moreover,
St. Paul had distinctly
declared
the Hebrews.
that the gods of the heathen were devils ; and everywhere
the early Christians
saw in disease the malignant work of
these dethroned
powers of evil.
The Gnostic
and Manichaean struggles had ripened the theologic idea that, although
at times diseases are punishments by the Almighty, the main
agency in them is Satanic.
The great fathers and renowned
leaders of the early Church accepted
and strengthened
this
idea.
Origen said : “It
is demons which produce famine,
unfruitfulness,
corruptions
of the air, pestilences ; they hover
concealed
in clouds in the lower atmosphere,
and are attracted by the blood and incense which the heathen offer to
them as gods.”
St. Augustine said : “ All diseases of Christians are to be ascribed
to these demons; chiefly do they
torment fresh-baptized
Christians,
yea, even the guiltless,
newborn
infants.”
Tertullian
insisted
that a malevolent
angel is in constant attendance upon every person.
Gregory
of Nazianzus declared
that bodily pains are provoked by
demons, and that medicines
are useless, but that they are
often cured by the laying on of consecrated
hands.
St.
Nilus and St. Gregory
of Tours, echoing St. Ambrose, gave
examples to show the sinfulness of resorting
to medicine instead of trusting to the intercession
of saints.
St. Bernard,‘in
a letter to certain monks, warned them
* For the mysticism which gradually enveloped the School of Alexandria, see
Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire, De I’,?&2 d’dZtmw&ie,
Paris, 1845, vol. vi, p. 161
For the effect of the new doctrines on the Empire of the East, see Sprengel, vol. ii,
p. 2413. As to the more common miracles of healing and the acknowledgment of
non-Christian miracles of healing by Christian fathers, see Fort, p. 84.
28
FROM
MIRACLES
TO MEDICINE.
that to seek relief from disease in medicine was in harmony
neither with their religion nor with the honour and purity
of their order.
This view even found its way into the canon
law, which declared the precepts
of medicine
contrary
to
Divine knowledge.
As a rule, the leaders of the Church
discouraged
the theory that diseases
are due to natural
causes, and most of them deprecated
a resort to surgeons
and physicians rather than to supernatural
means.*
Out of these and similar considerations
was developed
the vast system of “ pastoral medicine,” so powerful not only
through the Middle Ages, but even in modern times, both
among Catholics and Protestants.
As to its results, we must
bear in mind that, while there is no need to attribute
the
mass of stories
regarding
miraculous
cures to conscious
fraud, there was without doubt, at a later period, no small
admixture
of belief biased by self-interest,
with much pious
invention
and suppression
of facts.
Enormous
revenues
flowed into various monasteries
and churches in all parts of
Europe from relics noted for their healing powers.
Every
cathedral, every great abbey, and nearly every parish church
claimed possession of healing relics.
While, undoubtedly,
a
childlike faith was at the bottom of this belief, there came
out of it unquestionably
a great development
of the mercantile spirit.
The commercial
value of sundry relics was
In the year 1056 a French ruler pledged
often very high.
securities to the amount of ten thousand solidi for the production of the relics of St. Just and St. Pastor, pending a
* For Chaldean, Egyptian, and Persian ideas as to the diabolic origin of disease,
For Origen, see the
see authorities already cited, especially Maspero and Sayce.
For Augustine,
see De Divinatione Dremonum,
Contra Celsum, lib. viii, chap. xxi.
and Gregory of Nazianzus, set
chap. iii (p. 585 of Migne, vol. xl). For Tertullian
citations in Sprengel and in Fort, p. 6. For St. Nilus, see his life, in the Bollandise
For Gregory of Tours, see his Historia F~ancomm,
lib. v, cap.
Arta Sanct0rum.
I owe these citations to Mr. Lea
6, and his De Mirac. S. Martini, lib. ii, cap. 60.
For the letter
(History of the Znpisition
of fh Middle Ages, vol. iii, p. 410, note).
of St. Bernard to the monks of St. Anastasius,
see his EpistoZa in Migne, tom.
182, pp. 550, 551. For the canon law, see under De Consecratione, dist. v, c. xxi,
“ Contraria sunt divinae cognitioni przecepta medicinz : a jejunio revocant, lucubrare
non sinunt, ab omni intentione
meditationis
abducunt.”
For the turning
of the
Greek mythology into a demonology as largely due to St. Paul, see I Corinthians
x, 20: “ The things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to
God.”
“ PASTORAL
MEDICINE
” CHECKS
SCIENTIFIC
EFFORT.
q
legal decision
regarding
the ownership
between him and
the Archbishop
of Narbonne.
The Emperor
of Germany
on one occasion
demanded,
as a sufficient pledge for the
establishment
of a city market, the arm of St. George.
The
body of St. Sebastian
brought enormous wealth to the AbTreves, Marburg, every
bey of Soissons ; Rome, Canterbury,
great city, drew large revenues from similar sources, and the
Venetian Republic ventured very considerable
sums in the
purchase of relics.
Naturally,
then, corporations,
whether lay or ecclesiastical, which drew large revenue from relics looked with little favour on a science which tended to discredit
their in.
vestments.
Nowhere, perhaps, in Europe can the philosophy of this
development
of fetichism
be better studied to-day than at
At the cathedral,
preserved
in a magnificent
Cologne.
shrine since about the twelfth century, are the skulls of the
Three Kings, or Wise Men of the East, who, guided by the
star of Bethlehem,
brought
gifts to the Saviour.
These
relics were an enormous source of wealth to the cathedral
chapter
during
many centuries.
But other ecclesiastical
bodies in that city were both pious and shrewd, and so we
find that not far off, at the church of St. Gereon, a cemetery
has been dug up, and the bones distributed
over the walls
as the relics of St. Gereon and his Theban band of martyrs!
Again, at the neighbouring
church of St. Ursula, we have
the later spoils of another cemetery,
covering
the interior
walls of the church as the bones of St. Ursula and her eleven
thousand virgin martyrs : the fact that many of them, as
anatomists now declare, are the bones of nzen does not appear
in the Middle Ages to have diminished their power of competing with the relics at the other shrines in healing efficiency.
No error in the choice of these healing means seems to
have diminished
their efficacy.
When Prof. Buckland, the
eminent osteologist
and geologist, discovered that the relics
of St. Rosalia at Palermo, which had for ages cured diseases
and warded off epidemics, were the bones of a goat, this
fact caused not the slightest diminution in their miraculous
power.
Other developments
of fetich cure were no less discour-
30
FROM
MIRACLES
TO
MEDICINE.
aging to,the evolution of medical science.
Very important
amolig these was the Agnus Dei, or piece of wax from the
Paschal candles, stamped with the figure of a lamb and consecrated by the Pope.
In 1471 Pope Paul II expatiated
to
the Church on the efficacy of this fetich in preserving
men
from fire, shipwreck, tempest, lightning, and hail, as well as
in assisting women in childbirth ; and he reserved
to himself and his successors
the manufacture
of it. Even as late
as 1517 Pope Leo X issued, for a consideration,
tickets bearing a cross and the following inscription : “ This cross measured forty times makes the height of Christ in his humanity.
He who kisses it is preserved
for seven days from fallingsickness, apoplexy, and sudden death.”
Naturally, the belief thus.sanctioned
by successive heads
of the Church, infallible in all teaching regarding
faith and
morals, created
a demand fol’ amulets and charms of all
kinds; and under this influence we find a reversion
to old
pagan fetiches.
Nothing;
on the whole, stood more constantly in the way of any proper development of medical science than these fetich cures, whose efficacy was based on
theological reasoning and sanctioned by ecclesiastical
policy.
It would be expecting
too much from human nature to
imagine that pontiffs who derived large revenues from the
sale of the Agnus Dei, or priests who derived both wealth
and honours from cures wrought
at shrines under their
care, or lay dignitaries
who had invested heavily in relics,
should favour the development
of any science which undermined their interests.”
* See Fort’s Medical Economy during tke Middle Ages, pp. 211-213 ; also the
Hanu’books
of Murray and Baedeker
for North Germany, and various histories ol
medicine pas&
; alsoCollin de Plancy and scores of others. For the discovery
that the relics of St. Rosalia at Palermo are simply the bones of a goat, see Gordon,
For an account of the Agnus Dei, see Rydberg, pp.
Life of Buckland, pp. 94-96.
62, 63 ; and for “Conception
Billets,” pp. 64 and 65. For Leo X’s tickets, see
Hgusser (professor at Heidelberg),
period oft& &formation,
English translation,
Pa 17.
THEOLOGICAL
v. THEOLOGICAL
OPPOSITION
OPPOSITION
TO ANATOMICAL
TO ANATOMICAL
STUDIES.
3I
STUDIES.
Yet a more serious stumbling-block,
hindering the beginnings of modern medicine and surgery, was a theory regarding the unlawfulness
of meddling
with the bodies of the
dead.
This theory, like so many others which the Church
cherished
as peculiarly
its own, had really been inherited
So strong was it in Egypt
from the old pagan civilizations.
that the embalmer
was regarded
as accursed;
traces of it
appear in Graeco-Roman
life, and hence it came into the
early Church, where it was greatly strengthened
by the addition of perhaps the most noble of mystic ideas-the
recog.
nition of the human body as the temple of the Holy Spirit.
Hence Tertullian
denounced
the anatomist
Herophilus as a
butcher, and St. Augustine spoke of anatomists generally in
similar terms.
But this nobler conception
was alloyed with a mediaeval
superstition
even more effective, when the formula known
as the Apostles’ Creed had, in its teachings
regarding
the
resurrection
of the body, supplanted the doctrine laid down
by St. Paul.
Thence came a dread of mutilating
the body
in such a way that some injury might result to its final resurrection at the Last Day, and additional reasons for hindering dissections in the study of anatomy.
To these arguments
against dissection
was now added
another-one
which may well fill us with amazement.
It is
the remark of the foremost of recent English philosophical
historians,
that of all organizations
in human history the
Church of Rome has caused the greatest spilling of innocent
blood.
No one conversant
with history, even though he admit all possible extenuating
circumstances,
and honour the
older Church for the great services which can undoubtedly
be claimed for her, can deny this statement.
Strange
is it,
then, to note that one of the main objections developed in the
Middle Ages against anatomical studies was the maxim that
“ the Church abhors the shedding of blood.”
On this ground, in 1248, the Council of Le Mans forbade
surgery to monks.
Many other councils did the same, and
at the end of the thirteenth
century came the most serious
32
FROM
MIRACLES
TO
MEDICINE.
blow of all ; for then it was that Pope Boniface VIII, without any of that foresight of consequences
which might well
have been expected in an infallible teacher, issued a decretal
forbidding a practice which had come into use during the
Crusades, namely, the separation of the flesh from the bones
of the dead whose remains it was desired to carry back to
their own country.
*.
The idea lying at the bottom of this interdiction
was in
all probability
that which had inspired Tertullian
to make
his bitter utterance
against Herophilus;
but, be that as it
may, it soon came to be considered
as extending to all dissection, and thereby surgery and medicine were crippled for ,
more than two centuries;
it was the worst blow they ever
received, for it impressed
upon the mind of the Church the
belief that all dissection
is sacrilege,
and led to ecclesiastical mandates withdrawing
from the healing art the most
thoughtful
and cultivated
men of the Middle Ages and giving up surgery to the lowest class of nomadic charlatans.
So deeply was this idea rooted in the mind of the universal Church that for over a thousand years surgery was considered dishonourable
: the greatest
monarchs
were often
unable to secure an ordinary surgical operation ; and it ‘was
only in 1406 that a better beginning was made, when the Emperor Wenzel of Germany ordered that dishonour should no
longer attach to the surgical profession.*
* As to religious scruples against dissection, and abhorrence of the Parasclrites,
see Maspero and Sayce, The Dawn of CiniZization, p. 216. For denunciation of surgery by the Church authorities,
see Sprengel, vol. ii, pp. 432-435 ;
which led the Church to forbid
also Fort, pp. 452 et seq.; and for the reasoning
surgery to priests, see especially FrCdault, Histoire de ZaMhdecine, p. 200. As to
the decretal of Boniface VIII, the usual statement is that he forbade all dissections.
While it was undoubtedly
construed
universally
to prohibit dissections for anatomical purposes, its declared intent was as stated in the text ; that it was constantly
This
construed against anatomical investigations
can not for a moment be denied.
construction is taken for granted in the great Histoi’re Litthire
de ZaFrance, founded
by the Benedictines,
certainly a very high authority as to the main current of opinFor the decretal of Boniface VIII, see the CorptisJuris
Canoion in the Church.
nici. I have used the edition of Paris, 1618,where it may be found on pp. 866, 867.
See also, in spite of the special pleading of Giraldi, the Benedictine
Hid. Lit. de
la France, tome xvi, p. 98.
or embalmer,
I
34
FROM
MIRACLES
TO
MEDICINE.
principles
especially,
and brought medicine upon a higher
plane.
Still more important
is the rise of the School of Montpellier ; this was due almost entirely to Jewish
physicians,
and it developed medical studies to a yet higher point, doing
much to create a medical profession
worthy of the name
throughout southern Europe.
As to the Arabians, we find them from the tenth to the
fourteenth century, especially in Spain, giving much thought
to medicine,
and to chemistry
as subsidiary
to it. About
the beginning of the ninth century, when the greater Christian writers were supporting
fetich by theology, Almamon,
the Moslem, declared, “ They are the elect of God, his best
and most useful servants, whose lives are devoted to the improvement of their rational faculties.”
The influence of Avicenna, the translator
of the works of Aristotle,
extended
throughout
all Europe during the eleventh century.
The
Arabians were indeed much fettered by tradition in medical
science, but their translations
of Hippocrates
and Galen preserved to the world the best thus far developed in medicine,
and still better were their contributions
to pharmacy : these
remain of value to the present hour.*
Various Christian laymen also rose above the prevailing
theologic
atmosphere
far enough to see the importance
of
*promoting
scientific
development.
First among these we
may name the Emperor
Charlemagne;
he and his great
minister, Alcuin, not only promoted medical studies in the
schools they founded, but also made provision for the establishment of botanic gardens in which those herbs were espepecially
cultivated
which were supposed to have healing
So, too, in the thirteenth
century,
the Emperor
virtues.
Frederick
II, though under the ban of the Pope, brought to* For the great services rendered to the development of medicine by the Jews,
see Monteil, Jf&&ze
en France, p. 58 ; also the historians of medicine generally.
For the quotation from Almamon, see Gibbon, vol. x, p. 42. For the services of
both Jews and Arabians, see Bdatride,
Hi&ire
a’es Jaifs,
p. 115 ; also Sismondi,
/fist&e
des Franpis,
tome i, p. 191. For the Arabians, especially, see Rosseeuw
Saint-Hilaire,
Histoiw R”Espa~ne, Paris, 1844, vol. iii, pp. 191 et sty. For the tendency of the Mosaic books to insist on hygienic rather than therapeutical
treatment,
and its consequences
among Jewish physicians, see Sprengel, but especially Fr6dault, p. 14.
NEW
BEGINNINGS
OF
MEDICAL
SCIENCE.
35
gether in his various journeys, and especially in his crusading expeditions,
many Greek and Arabic manuscripts,
and
took special pains to have those which concerned
medicine
better ideas of
preserved
and studied ; he also promoted
medicine and embodied them in laws.
Men of science also rose, in the stricter sense of the word,
even in the centuries
under the most complete
sway of
theological
thought and ecclesiastical
power ; a science, indeed, alloyed
with theology,
but still infolding
precious
germs.
Of these were men like Arnold of Villanova,
Bertrand de Gordon, Albert of Bollstadt, Basil Valentine,
Raymond Lully, and, above all, Roger Bacon ; all of whom cultivated sciences subsidiary to medicine, and in spite of charges
of sorcery, with possibilities
of imprisonment
and death, kept
the torch of knowledge
burning, and passed it on to future
generations.*
From the Church itself, even when the theological
atmosphere was most dense, rose here and there men who persisted
As early as the ninth cenin something like scientific effort.
tury, Bertharius,
a monk of Monte Cassino, prepared two
manuscript volumes of prescriptions
selected
from ancient
writers;
other monks studied them somewhat, and, during
succeeding
ages, scholars like Hugo, Abbot of St. Denis,Notker, monk of St. Gall,-Hildegard,
Abbess of Rupertsberg,-Milo,
Archbishop
of Beneventum,-and
John of St.
Amand, Canon of Tournay, did something
for medicine as
they generally
underthey understood
it. Unfortunately,
stood its theory as a mixture of deductions
from Scripture
with dogmas from Galen, and its practice
as a mixture of
incantations
with fetiches.
Even Pope Honorius
III did
something for the establishment
of medical schools;
but he
did so much more to place ecclesiastical
and theological
fetters upon teachers and taught, that the value of his gifts
All germs of a higher evolution of
may well be doubted.
* For the progress of sciences subsidiary to medicine even in the darkest ages,
see Fort, PP. 374, 375 ; also Isensee, Geschic&e der Medicin, pp. 225 et q. ; also
Monteil, p. 89; Heller,
Gesc&&e
der Phyysik, vol. i, bk. 3 ; also Kopp, Geschichfe der C?mnie. For Frederick
II and his Medicinal-Gesetz,
see Baas, p. 221,
but especially
Van Raumer,
Gesrhichk
der Ilohenstaufen,
Leipsic, 1872, vol. iii,
P. 259.
FROM
36
-
MIRACLES
TO
MEDICINE.
medicine were for ages well kept under by the theological
spirit.
As far back as the sixth century so great a man as
Pope Gregory I showed himself hostile to the development
In the beginning of the twelfth century the
of this science.
Council of Rheims interdicted
the study of law and physic
to monks, and a multitude
of other councils enforced this
About the middle of the same century St. Bernard
decree.
still complained that monks had too much to do with medicine ; and a few years later we have decretals like those of
Pope Alexander
III forbidding
monks to study or practise
it. For many generations there appear evidences of a desire
among the more broad-minded
churchmen to allow the cultivation of medical science among ecclesiastics:
Popes like
Clement III and Sylvester
II seem to have favoured this,
and we even hear of an Archbishop
of Canterbury
skilled in
medicine ; but in the beginning of the thirteenth century the
Fourth Council of the Lateran forbade surgical operations
to be practised
by priests, deacons, and subdeacons;
and
some years later Honorius
III reiterated
this decree and
extended it. In 1~43 the Dominican
order forbade medical
treatises to be brought into their monasteries, and finally all
participation
of ecclesiastics
in the science and art of medicine was effectually prevented.*
VII.
THEOLOGICAL
DISCOURAGEMENT
OF
.
MEDICINE.
While
various churchmen,
building
better
than they
knew, thus did something
to lay foundations
for medical
study, the Church authorities,
as a rule, did even more to
thwart it among the very men who, had they been allowed
liberty, would have cultivated it to the highest advantage.
* For statements as to these decrees of the highest Church and monastic authorities against medicine and surgery, see Sprengel, Baas, GesrhicLfe der Ahdirin, p.
zoq,and elsewhere ; also Buckle, Posthumous Works, vol. ii, p. 567. For a long
list of Church dignitaries who practised a semi-theological
medicine in the Middle
Ages, see Baas, pp. 204, zag. For Bertharius,
Hildegard,
and others mentioned,
see also Sprengel and other historians
of medicine.
For clandestine study and
practice of medicine by sundry ecclesiastics
in spite of the prohibitions
by the
Church, see Von Raumer, H&nstaufen,
vol. vi, p. 438. For some remarks on this
subject by an eminent and learned ecclesiastic, see Ricker; 0. S. B., professor in
the University of Vienna, PnstoraGPsychiairie, Wien, 1894, pp. 12, 13.
I
THEOLOGICAL
DISCOURAGEMENT
OF
MEDICINE.
37
Then, too, we find cropping out everywhere
the feeling
that, since supernatural
means are so abundant,
there is
something
irreligious
in seeking
cure by natural
means:
ever and anon we have appeals to Scripture,
and especially
to the case of King Asa, who trusted to physicians rather
than to the priests of Jahveh, and so died.
Hence it was
that St. Bernard
declared
that monks who took medicine
Even the
were guilty of conduct unbecoming
to religion.
School of Salerno
was held in aversion
by multitudes
of
strict churchmen,
since it prescribed
rules for diet, thereby
indicating a belief that diseases arise from natural causes and
not from the malice of the devil: moreover, in the medical
schools Hippocrates
was studied, and he had especially declared that demoniacal
possession
is “ nowise more divine,
Hence it was,
nowise more infernal, than any other disease.”
doubtless, that the Lateran Council, about the beginning of
the thirteenth
century,
forbade
physicians,
under pain of
exclusion from the Church, to undertake
medical treatment
without calling in ecclesiastical
advice.
This view was long cherished in the Church, and nearly
two hundred and fifty years later Pope Pius V revived it
by renewing
the command of Pope Innocent and enforcing
it with penalties.
Not only did Pope Pius order that all
physicians
before administering
treatment should call in “a
physician
of the soul,” on the ground, as he declares, that
“ bodily infirmity frequently arises from sin,” but he ordered
that, if at the end of three days the patient had not made confession to a priest, the medical man should cease his treatment, under pain of being deprived of his right to practise,
and of expulsion from the faculty if he were a professor, and
that every physician and professor of medicine should make
oath that he was strictly fulfilling these conditions.
Out of this feeling had grown up another practice, which
made the development
of medicine still more difficult-the
classing of scientific men generally with sorcerers and magicmongers : from this largely
rose the charge
of atheism
against physicians,
which ripened into a proverb, (‘ Where
there are three physicians there are two atheists.” *
* I6U6i sunt iyes nzedici
Bulkzrium
Ramanum,
i6i sunt
ed. Gaude,
duo athei.”
Naples,
For
13Q2, tom. vii,
the bull of Pius V, see the
pp. 430, 431.
38
FROM
MIRACLES
TO
MED:CINE.
Magic was so common a charge that many physicians
seemed to believe it themselves.
In the tenth century Gerbert, afterward known as Pope Sylvester
II, was at once suspected of sorcery when he showed a disposition
to adopt
scientific methods ; in the eleventh century this charge nearly
cost the life of Constantine Africanus when he broke
from
the beaten path of medicine ; in the thirteenth, it gave Roger
Bacon, one of the greatest
benefactors
of mankind, many
years of imprisonment,
and nearly brought him to the stake :
these cases are typical of very many.
Still another charge against physicians
who showed a
talent for investigation
was that of Mohammedanism
and
Averroism ; and Petrarch
stigmatized
Averroists
as “ men
who deny Genesis and bark at Christ.” *
The effect of this widespread
ecclesiastical
opposition
was, that for many centuries the study of medicine was relegated mainly to the lowest order of practitioners.
There
was, indeed, one orthodox line of medical evolution during
the later Middle Ages : St. Thomas Aquinas insisted that the
forces of the body are independent of its physical organization, and that therefore these forces are to be studied by the
scholastic philosophy and the theological
method, instead of
by researches
into the structure of the body ; as a result of
this, mingled with survivals of various pagan superstitions,
we have in anatomy and physiology
such doctrines as the
increase and decrease
of the brain with the phases of the
moon, the ebb and flow of human vitality with the tides of
the ocean, the use of the lungs to fan the heart, the function
of the liver as the seat of love, and that of the spleen as the
centre of wit.
Closely connected with these methods of thought was the
It was reasoned that the Almighty
doctrine of signatures.
must have set his sign upon the various means of curing disease which he has provided : hence it was held that bloodroot, on account of its red juice, is good for the blood ; liverwort, having a leaf like the liver, cures diseases of the liver;
eyebright, being marked with a spot like an eye, cures dis* For Averroes, see Renan, Av~rroks et 2’Averroism.q Paris, 1861, pp. 327-335.
For a perfectly just statement
of the only circumstances
which can justify a charge
of atheism, see Rev. Dr. Deems, in Popular Science Mont!+,
February,
1876.
THEOLOGICAL
DISCOURAGEMENT
OF
MEDICINE.
39
having a yellow juice, cures
eases of the eyes; celandine,
jaundice; bugloss, resembling
a snake’s head, cures snakebite; red flannel, looking like blood, cures blood-taints, and
therefore rheumatism ; bear’s grease, being taken from an
animal thickly covered with hair, is recommended
to persons fearing baldness.*
Still another method evolved by this theological
pseudoscience was that of disgusting
the demon with the body
which he tormented:
hence the patient was made to swallow or apply to himself various unspeakable
ordures, with
such medicines
as the livers of toads, the blood of frogs
and rats, fibres of the hangman’s rope, and ointment made
Many of these were
from the body of gibbeted
criminals.
survivals of heathen superstitions,
but theologic
reasoning
As an example
wrought into them an orthodox significance.
of this mixture of heathen with Christian
magic, we may
cite the following from a mediaeval medical book as a salve
against “ nocturnal goblin visitors ” : “ Take hop plant, wormwood, bishopwort,
lupine, ash-throat,
henbane,
harewort,
viper’s bugloss, heathberry
plant, cropleek, garlic, grains of
Put these wort,s into a veshedgerife, githrife, and fennel.
sel, set them under the altar, sing over them nine masses,
boil them in butter and sheep’s grease, add much holy salt,
strain through a cloth, throw the worts into running water.
If any ill temptin g occur to a man, or an elf or goblin night
visitors come, smear his body with this salve, and put it on
his eyes, and tense him with incense, and sign him frequently
with the sign of the cross.
His condition
will soon be
better.” +
* For a summary of the superstitions which arose under the theological doctrine
of signatures, see Dr. Eccles’s
admirable
little tract on the-Ez&tion
of&‘edical
Science, p. 140; see also Scoffern,
f For a list of unmentionable
seventeenth
century,
Bayerr~, W&burg,
Science and FoZk Lore, p. 76.
ordures
used in Germany
near
the end of the
see Lammert,
Vo~k.medizi~zund mediziniscker Abeerghube in
1869, p. 34, note.
For the English
prescription
given, see
Cockayne, LeecAdoms, Wortcunning,
and Starrraft
of ,?a+
England, in the Mas,
Still another
ter of the Rolls’ series, London, 1865, vol. ii, pp. 345 and following.
For
of these prescriptions
given by Cockayne covers three or four octave pages.
very full details
survivals
of this sort of sacred
of it at the present
time,
pseudo-science
in Germany,
with accounts
see Wuttke, Prof. der Theologie
in Halle,
Deutscke VoZksabeergZaudeder Gegenwart, Berlin, 1869, pa&m.
For France,
Rambaud, Histoire de la Cidisation franyaise,
pp. 371 et seg.
of
De?
see
40
FROM
MIRACLES
TO MEDICINE.
As to surgery, this same amalgamation
of theology with
survivals of pagan beliefs continued to check the evolution
of medical science down to the modern epoch.
The nominal
hostility of the Church to the shedding of blood withdrew,
as we have seen, from surgical
practice the ‘great body of
remained down to the
her educated
men ; hence surgery
fifteenth century a despised profession, its practice continued
largely in the hands of charlatans, and down to a very recent period the name “barber-surgeon
” was a survival of
this.
In such surgery,
the application
of various ordures
relieved fractures ; the touch of the hangman cured sprains ;
the breath of a donkey expelled poison ; friction with a dead
man’s tooth cured toothache.*
The enormous development
of miracle and fetich cures
in the Church continued
during century after century, and
here probably lay the main causes of hostility between the
Church on the one hand and the better sort of physicians on
the other;
namely, in the fact that the Church supposed
herself in possession
of something
far better than scientific
methods in medicine.
Under the sway of this belief a natu_
ral and laudable veneration
for the relics of Christian martyrs was developed more and more into pure fetichism.
Thus the water in which a single hair of a saint had been
dipped was used as a purgative ; water in which St. Remy’s
ring had been dipped cured fevers ; wine in which the bones
of a saint had been dipped cured lunacy ; oil frbm a lamp
burning before the tomb of St. Gall cured tumours;
St. Valthroat diseases;
St.
entine cured epilepsy ; St. Christopher,
Eutropius,
dropsy ; St. Ovid, deafness;
St. Gervase,
rheumatism ; St. Apollonia,
toothache;
St. Vitus, St. Anthony,
and a multitude
of other saints, the maladies which bear
Even as late as 1784 we find certain authorities
their names.
in Bavaria ordering that any one bitten by a mad dog shall
at once put up prayers at the shrine of St. Hubert, and not
waste his time in any attempts at mkdical or surgical cure.f
In the twelfth century we find a noted cure attempted by
* On the low estate of surgery during the Middle Ages, see the histories of
medicine already cited, and especially Kotelmann,
Gesundktspjqe
im Mitteldter,
Hamburg,
1890, pp. 216 et seq.
f See Baas, p. 614 ; alsoBiedermann.
THEOLOGICAL
DISCOURAGEMENT
OF
MEDICINE.
4I
causing the invalid to drink water in which St. Bernard had
washed his hands.
Flowers which had rested on the tomb
of a saint, when steeped in water, were supposed to be espeThe pulpit everywhere
’ cially effiacious in various diseases.
dwelt with unction on the reality of fetich cures, and among
the choice stories collected by Archbishop Jacques de Vitry
for the use of preachers
was one which, judging
from its
frequent recurrence
in monkish literature,
must have sunk
deep into the popular mind : “ Two lazy beggars, one blind,
the other lame, try to avoid the relics of St. Martin, borne
about in procession, so that they may not be healed and lose
their claim to alms.
The blind man takes the lame man on
his shoulders to guide him, but they are caught in the crowd
and healed against their will.“”
Very important
also throughout
the Middle Ages were
the medical virtues attributed
to saliva.
The use of this
It is clearly found in
remedy had early Oriental
sanction.
Egypt.
Pliny devotes
a considerable
part of one of his
it; Vespasian,
when he
chapters
to it; Galen approved
visited Alexandria,
is said to have cured a blind man by applying saliva to his eyes ; but the great example impressed
most forcibly
upon the medieval
mind was the use of it
ascribed in the fourth Gospel
to Jesus himself:
thence it
‘came not only into Church ceremonial,
but largely into medical practice.+
As the theological
atmosphere
thickened,
nearly every
country had its long list of saints, each with a special power
The clergy, having great
over some one organ or disease.
influence over the medical schools, conscientiously
mixed
In the
this fet.ich medicine with the beginnings
of science.
tenth century, even at the School of Salerno, we find that
* For the efficacy of flowers, see the Bollandist Lives of the Saints, cited in Fort,
p. 279 ; alsopp. 457, 458. For the story of those unwillingly
cured, see the _&empm of Jacques de Vitry, edited by Prof. T. F. Crane, of Cornell University,
London, 1890, pp. 52, 182.
t As to the use of saliva in medicine,
see Story, Castle of St. Angelo, and Other
Essays, London, 1877, pp. 208 and elsewhere.
For Pliny, Galen, and others, see
the same, p. 211 ; see also the book of Todit, chap. xi, 2-13. For the case of
Vespasian, see Suetonius, Life of Yespasian ; also Tacitus, Zzfistori~, lib. iv, c. 81.
For its use by St. Francis Xavier, see Coleridge, Life and Letters of St. firancis
Xavier, London, 1872.
42
FROM
MIRACLES
TO MEDICINE.
the sick were cured not only by medicine, but by the relics
of St. Matthew and others.
Human nature, too, asserted itself, then as now, by making various pious cures fashionable
for a time and then
allowing them to become unfashionable.
Just as we see the
relics of St. Cosmo and St. Damian in great vogue during
the early Middle Ages, but out of fashion and without efficacy afterward, so we find in the thirteenth
century that the
bones of St. Louis, having come into fashion, wrought multitudes of cures, while in the fourteenth,
having become unfashionable, they ceased to act, and gave place for a time to
the relics of St. Roth of Montpellier
and St. Catherine of
Sienna, which in their turn wrought many cures until they
too became out of date and yielded to other saints.
Just so
in modern times the healing miracles of La Salette have lost
prestige in some measure, and those of Lourdes have come
into fashion.*
Even such serious matters as fractures, calculi, and difficult parturition,
in which modern science has achieved some
of its greatest triumphs, were then dealt with by relics ; and
to this hour the ex votes hanging at such shrines as those of
St. Genevieve
at Paris, of St. Antony at Padua, of the Druid
image at Chartres, of the Virgin at Einsiedeln and Lourdes,
of the fountain at La Salette, are survivals of this same conception of disease and its cure.
So, too, with a multitude
of sacred pools, streams, and
spots of earth.
In Ireland, hardly a parish has not had one
such sacred centre;
in England
and Scotland
there have
been many ; and as late as 1805 the eminent Dr. Milner, of
the Roman Catholic Church, gave a careful and earnest account of a miraculous cure wrought at a sacred well in Flintshire.
In all parts of Europe the pious resort to wells and
springs continued
long after the close of the Middle Ages,
and has not entirely ceased to-day.
It is not at all necessary to suppose intentional deception
* For one of these lists of saints curing diseases, see Pettigrew,
On Supeustitions connected with Medicine ; for another, see Jacob, Superstitions Populaires, pp.
For a compari96-100 ; also Rydberg, p. 69 : also Maury, Rambaud, and others.
son of fashions in miracles with fashions in modern healing agents, see LittrG,
M&e&e et Mhdecins, pp. 119, 136, and elsewhere ; also Sprengel, vol. ii, p, 143.
THEOLOGICAL
DISCOURAGEMENT
OF
MEDICINE.
43
Although
in the origin and maintenance
of all fetich cures.
two different judicial investigations
of the modern miracles
at La Salette have shown their origin tainted with fraud,
and though
the recent
restoration
of the Cathedral
of
Trondhjem
has revealed the fact that the healing powers
of the sacred spring which once brought such great revenues to that shrine were assisted by angelic voices spoken
through a tube in the walls, not unlike the pious machinery
discovered in the Temple of Isis at Pompeii, there is little
doubt that the great majority of fountain and even shrine
cures, such as they have been, have resulted from a natural
law, and that belief in them was based on honest argument
For the theological
argument which thus
from Scripture.
stood in the way of science was simply this: if the Almighty
saw fit to raise the dead man who touched the bones of Elisha,
why should he not restore to life the patient who touches at
Cologne the bones of the Wise Men of the East who followed
the star of the Nativity ? If Naaman was cured by dipping
himself in the waters of the Jordan, and so many others by
going down into the Pool of Siloam, why should not men
still be cured by bathing in pools which men equally holy
with Elisha have consecrated ? If one sick man was restored
by touching the garments
of St. Paul, why should not another sick man be restored by touching
the seamless coat of
Christ at Treves, or the winding-sheet
of Christ at Besanson?
And out of all these inquiries
came inevitably that
question whose logical answer was especially
injurious
to
the development
of medical science : Why should men seek
to build up scientific medicine and surgery, when relics, pilgrimages,
and sacred observances,
according
to an overwhelming mass of concurrent
testimony, have cured and are
curing hosts of sick folk in all parts of Europe ? *
* For sacred fountains in modern times, see Pettigrew, as above, p. 42 ; also
Dalyell, D&u
Su$erstitions
of Scot&d,
pp. 82 and following ; also Montalembe& ~5s fif&es
d’Occia’ent, tome iii, p. 323, note.
For those in Ireland, with
many curious details, see S. C. Hall, 1~Zand, 2~ Scenery and C~~acte~,
London,
For the case in Flintshire,
see Authentic Docu1841, vol. i, p. 282, and pnssim.
ments relative
to the Miracdous
hampton, at Ho&m&
Vicar Apostolic,
etc.,
f?intshire,
London,
Cure of Winifred
on the 28th o/June,
1805.
For
sacred
White,
of the
Town of WoZver_
1805, by John
wells
in France,
Milner, D. D.,
see Chevart,
44
FROM MIRACLES
TO MEDICINE.
Still another development of the theological
spirit, mixed
with professional exclusiveness
and mob prejudice, wrought
untold injury.
Even to those who had become so far emancipated from allegiance
to fetich cures as to consult physicians, it was forbidden to consult those who, as a rule, were
the best.
From a very early period of European history the
Jews had taken the lead in medicine ; their share in founding the great schools of Salerno and Montpellier
we have
already noted, and in all parts of Europe we find them acknowledged
leaders in the healing art.
The Church authorities, enforcing the spirit of the time, were especially severe
against these benefactors : that men who openly rejected the
means of salvation, and whose souls were undeniably lost,
should heal the elect seemed an insult to Providence ; preaching friars denounced them from the pulpit, and the rulers in
state and church, while frequently secretly consulting them,
openly proscribed them.
Gregory
of Tours tells us of an archdeacon
who, having
been partially cured of disease of the eyes by St. Martin,
sought further aid from a Jewish physician, with the result
that neither the saint nor the Jew could help him afterward.
Popes Eugene IV, Nicholas V, and Calixtus III especially
forbade Christians
to employ them.
The Trullanean
Council in the eighth century, the Councils of Beziers and Alby
in the thirteenth,
the Councils of Avignon and Salamanca in
the fourteenth, the Synod of Bamberg and the Bishop of Passau in the fifteenth, the Council of Avignon in the sixteenth,
with many others, expressly forbade the faithful to call Jewsuch great preachers
as John
ish physicians
or surgeons;
Geiler and John Herolt
thundered
from the pulpit against
them and all who consulted them.
As late as the middle of
the seventeenth
century, when the City Council of Hall, in
Wiirtemberg,
gave some privileges
to a Jewish physician
For
Histoire do Char&es,
vol. i, pp. 84-89, and French lock1historiesgenerally.
superstitions
attaching to springs in Germany, see Wuttke,
VoZ~2ksndavglau6e,3% 12
and 356. For one of the most exquisitely wrought works of modern fiction, showing perfectly the recent evolution of miraculous
powers at a fashionable
spring in
The reference
to the old pious
France, see Gustave Droz, Autouv d’une Souvce.
machinery at Trondhjem
is based upon personal observation by the present writer
in August, 1893.
FETICH
CURES
UNDER
PROTESTANTISM.
45
‘1on account
of his admirable
experience
and skill,” the
clergy of the city joined in a protest, declaring that “ it were
better
to die with Christ than to be cured by a Jew doctor
Still, in their extremity,
bishops, caraided by the devil.”
dinals, kings, and even popes, insisted on calling in physicians of the hated race.*
VIII.
FETICH
CURES
UNDER
PROTESTANTISX-THE
ROYAL
TOUCH.
The Reformation
made no sudden change in the sacred
Luther, as is well known, again and
theory of medicine.
again ascribed
his own diseases to “devils’ spells,” declaring that “ Satan produces all the maladies ivhich afflict mankind, for he is the prince of death,” and that “he poisons
the air ” ; but that “no malady comes from God.”
From
that day down to the faith cures of Boston, Old Orchard,
and among the sect of “ Peculiar People ” in our own time,
we see the results among Protestants
of seeking the cause
of disease in Satanic influence and its cure in fetichism.
*
For the general
subject
of the influence
of theological
ideas
upon
medicine,
of Mea’&2
Economy during tke Mid&? Ages, New York, 1883,
des R&pus,
pas&a ; also
chaps. xiii and xviii ; alsoCollin de Plancy, Dictionnaire
Rambaud,
Hz&ire
de la Civilisation
franfaaiz,
Paris, 1885, vol. i, chap. xviii ;
For proofs that
also Sprengel, vol. ii, p. 345, and elsewhere ; also Baas and others.
see Fort,
Uirtory
the School
of Salerno
was not founded
by the monks,
Benedictine
or other,
but by,
laymen, who left out a faculty of theology from their organization,
see Haeser,
For a very str-iking
Lekrbuch der Geschichte der Medicin, vol. i, p. 646 ; also Baas.
statement that married professors, women, and Jews were admitted to professional
chairs, see Baas, pp. 208 et seq. ; also summary by Dr. Payne, article in the Bncyc.
Brit.
Sprengel’s
old theory that the school was founded by Benedictines
;
seems now
entirely
given up ; see Haeser
he,
For the citation from Gregory of Tours, see his t&t. Fmncorum,
133.
For the eminence of Jewish physicians and proscription
of them, see Beu-
p.
lib. vi.
gnot, Les /aifs
Lance,
en Itdie,
d’occident,
and Baas on the subject
Paris,
et en Espagne,
1824,
pp. 76-94
also Daremberg,
; also Bedarride,
chaps. v, viii, x, and xiii ; also
de la M&e&e,
Paris, 1846, tome i, p. 439
For Church
zin, etc., in Bayern, p. 6, note.
;
La M&e_
LPS Juij‘s
Rknouard,
en
U&&-e
also, especially,
Lammert,
Vo~kmedidecrees against them, see the Acta Con-
rilionrm, ed. Hardouin, vol. x, pp. 1634, 1700,
of them by Geiler and others, see Kotelmann.
1870, 1973, etc.
GesundkeitspJege
For
denunciations
im Mittelalter,
pp.
For a list of kings and popes who persisted in having Jewish physicians
194, ‘95.
and for other curious information
of the sort, see Prof. Levi of Vercelli, Cristinni
ea’ Ebrei nel M&o Eva, pp. 200-207
; and for a very valuable summary, see Lecky,
History of Rationalism in Europe, vol. ii, pp. 265-271.
46
FROM
MIRACLES
TO
MEDICINE.
Yet Luther, with his sturdy common sense, broke away
from one belief which has interfered with the evolution of
medicine from the dawn of Christianity
until now.
When
that troublesome
declaimer, Carlstadt, declared that “ whoso
falls sick shall use no physic, but commit his case to God,
praying that His will be done,” Luther asked, ‘( Do you eat
when you are hungry ? ” and the answer being in the affirmative, he continued, “ Even so you may use physic, which is
God’s gift just as meat and drink is, or whatever else we use
for the preservation
of life.”
Hence it was, doubtless, that
the Protestant
cities of Germany
were more ready than
others to admit anatomical
investigation
by proper
dissections.*
Perhaps
the best-known
development
of a theological
view in the Protestant
Church was that mainly evolved in
England
out of a French
germ of theological
thought-a
belief in the efficacy of the royal touch in sundry diseases,
especially
epilepsy
and scrofula,
the latter being consequently
known as the king’s evil.
This mode of cure
began, so far as history throws light upon it, with Edward
the Confessor in the eleventh century, and came down from
reign to reign, passing from the Catholic saint to Protestant
debauchees
upon the English throne, with ever-increasing
miraculous efficacy.
Testimony
to the reality of these cures is overwhelming.
As a simple matter of fact, there are no miracles
of healing
in the history of the human race more thoroughly
attested
than those wrought by the touch of Henry VIII, Elizabeth,
the Stuarts, and especially of that chosen vessel, Charles II.
Though Elizabeth could not bring herself fully to believe in
the reality of these cures, Dr. Tooker, the Queen’s chaplain,
afterward Dean of Lichfield, testifies fully of his own knowledge to the cures wrought by her, as also does William
Clowes, the Queen’s surgeon.
Fuller, in his Churck History,
gives an account of a Roman Catholic who was thus cured
* For Luther’s belief and his answer to Carlstadt,
see his T&e
T&k, espeFor recent “ faith
cially in Hazlitt’s edition, pp. 250--257 ; also his letterspassim.
cures,” see Dr. Buckley’s articles on Faitk Heding and Kindred Phenomena, in
Th Centuqy, 1886. For the greater readiness of the Protestant
cities to facilitate
dissections, see Roth, Andreas
Yesal&, p. 33.
FETICH
i
s;,,
I
CURES
UNDER
PROTESTANTISM.
47
by the Queen’s touch and converted to Protestantism.
Similar testimony exists as to cures wrought by James I. Charles
I also enjoyed the same power, in spite of the public declaration against its reality by Parliament.
In one case the King
saw a patient in the crowd, too far off to be touched, and
simply said, “ God bless thee and grant thee thy desire ” ;
whereupon, it is asserted, the blotches
and humours disappeared from the patient’s body and appeared in the bottle
of medicine which he held in his hand ; at least so says Dr.
John Nicholas, Warden of Winchester
College, who declares
this of his own knowledge to be every word of it true.
But the most incontrovertible
evidence
of this miraculous gift is found in the case of Charles II, the most thoroughly cynical
debauchee
who ever sat on the English
throne before the advent of George IV.
He touched nearly
one hundred
thousand
persons, and the outlay for gold
medals issued to the afflicted
on these occasions
rose in
some years as high as ten thousand pounds.
John Brown,
surgeon in ordinary to his Majesty and to St. Thomas’s Hospital, and author of many learned works on surgery and
anatomy, published accounts of sixty cures due to the touch
of this monarch ; and Sergeant-Surgeon
Wiseman devotes an
entire book to proving the reality of these cures, saying, 6LI
myself have been frequent
witness to many hundreds
of
cures performed
by his Majesty’s
touch alone without any
assistance of chirurgery,
and these many of them had tyred
out the endeavours
of able chirurgeons
before they came
Yet it is especially instructive
to note that, while
thither.”
in no other reign were so many people touched for scrofula,
and in none were so many cures vouched for, in no other
reign did SO many people die of that disease:
the bills of
mortality show this clearly, and the reason doubtless is the
general substitution
of supernatural
for scientific
means of
cure.
This is but one out of many examples showing the
havoc which a scientific test always makes among miracles
if men allow it to be applied.
To James II the same power continued ; and if it be said,
in the words of Lord Bacon, that “ imagination
is next of kin
to miracle-a
working faith,” something else seems required
to account for the testimony of Dr. Heylin to cures wrought
I
I
48
MIRACLES
TO
MEDICINE.
the royal touch upon babes in their mothers’ arms.
Mythmaking and marvel-mongering
were evidently at work here
as in so many other places, and so great was the fame of
these cures that we find, in the year before James was dethroned, a pauper at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, petitioning
the General Assembly to enable him to make the voyage to
England in order that he may be healed by the royal touch.
The change in the royal succession does not seem to have
interfered
with the miracle ; for, though William
III evidently regarded the whole thing as a superstition, and on one
occasion is said to have touched a patient, saying to him,
“ God give you better
health and more sense,” Whiston
assures
us that this person was healed, notwithstanding
William’s incredulity.
As to Queen Anne, Dr. Daniel Turner, in his Art of
Surgery,
relates that several cases of scrofula which had
been unsuccessfully
treated by hitnself and Dr. Charles Bernard, sergeant-surgeon
to her Majesty, yielded afterward
to
the efficacy of the Queen’s touch.
Naturally does Collier,
in his Ecdesiastical
History, say regarding these cases that to
dispute them “is to come to the extreme of scepticism, to
deny our senses and be incredulous even to ridiculousness.”
Testimony to the reality of these cures is indeed overwhelming, and a multitude
of most sober scholars,
divines, and
doctors of medicine
declared the evidence absolutely conThat the Church of Eugland accepted the doctrine
vincing.
of the royal touch is witnessed
by the special service provided in the Pmyrr-Book
of that period for occasions when
The ceremony was conducted
the King exercised this gift.
with great solemnity and pomp : during the reading of the
service and the laying on of the King’s hands, the attendant
bishop or priest recited
the words, “ They shall lay their
hands on the sick, and they shall recover “; afterward
came
special prayers, the Epistle and Gospel, with the blessing,
and finally his Majesty washed his royal hands in golden
vessels which high noblemen held for him.
In France, too, the royal touch continued, with similar
On a certain Easter Sunday, that
testimony to its efficacy.
pious king, Louis XIV, touched about sixteen hundred persons at Versailles.
by
I
,
FROM
THE
SCIENTIFIC
STRUGGLE
FOR ANATOMY.
49
far and
This curative
power was, then, acknowledged
alike, upon the Conwide, by Catholics
and Protestants
tinent, in Great Britain, and in America;
and it descended
not only in spite of the transition of the English kings from
Catholicism
to Protestantism,
but in spite of the transition
from the legitimate
sovereignty
of the Stuarts to the illegitiAnd yet, within a
mate succession of the House of Orange.
few years after the whole world held this belief, it was dead ;
it had shrivelled
away in the growing
scientific
light at the
dawn of the eighteenth
century.*
THE
IX.
SCIENTIFIC
STRUGGLE
FOR ANATOMY.
We may now take up the evolution of medical science
out of the mediaeval view and its modern survivals.
All
through the Middle Ages, as we have seen, some few laymen
and ecclesiastics
here and there, braving the edicts of the
Church and popular superstition,
persisted in medical study
and practice : this was especially seen at the greater universities, which had become somewhat emancipated
from ecclesiastical control.
In the thirteenth
century the University
of Paris gave a strong impulse to the teaching of medicine,
and in that and the following
century we begin to find the
first intelligible
reports of medical cases since the coming in
of Christianity.
In the thirteenth
century
also the arch-enemy
of the
papacy, the Emperor Frederick
II, showed his free-thinking
tendencies by granting, from time to time, permissions to disIn the centuries following,
sundry
sect the human subject.
other monarchs timidly followed his example:
thus John of
* For the royal touch, see Beck&, Free and1mportiaZ
Jnpuiry into t&z Antiquity
and Escacy of Tour/zing for the King’s Evil, 1772, cited in Pettigrew, p. 128, and
elsewhere ; also Scoffern, Science and FoZk Lore, London, 1E70, pp. 413 and following; also Adams,
The HeaZing Art, London,
1887, vol. i, pp. 53-60 : and
especially Lecky, History of European MoraZs, vol. i, chapter on The Conversion of
Rome ; also his History of England in the Eighteenth Century, vol. i, chap. i. For
curious details regarding the mode of conducting the ceremony, see Evelyn’s Diary ;
also Lecky, as above.
For the royal touch in France, and for a claim to its possession in feudal times by certain noble families, see Rambaud, Hist. de Za Civ. J‘?WZvise, P. 375.
32
so
FROM
MIRACLES
TO
MEDICINE.
Aragon, in rsgr, gave to the University
of Lerida the privilege of dissecting one dead criminal every three years.*
During the fifteenth century and the earlier years of the
sixteenth the revival of learning, the invention of printing,
and the great voyages of discovery gave a new impulse to
thought, and in this medical science shared : the old theological way of thinking
was greatly
questioned,
and gave
place in many quarters to a different way of looking at the
universe.
In the sixteenth
century
Paracelsus
appears-a
great
genius, doing much to develop medicine beyond the reach
of sacred and scholastic
tradition, though still fettered by
many superstitions.
More and more, in spite of theological
dogmas, came a renewal of anatomical
studies by dissection
of the human subject.
The practice of the old Alexandrian
School was thus resumed.
Mundinus, Professor of Medicine
at Bologna
early in the fourteenth
century, dared use the
human subject occasionally
in his lectures;
but finally came
a far greater champion of scientific truth, Andreas Vesalius,
founder of the modern science
of anatomy.
The battle
waged by this man is one of the glories of our race.
From the outset Vesalius proved himself a master.
In
the search for real knowledge
he risked the most terrible
dangers, and especially
the charge
of sacrilege,
founded
upon the teachings
of the Church for ages.
As we have
seen, even such men in the early Church as Tertullian
and
St. Augustine held anatomy in abhorrence,
and the decretal
of Pope Boniface VIII was universally
construed as forbidand as threatening
excommunication
ding all dissection,
this sacred convenagainst those practising
it. Through
tionalism Vesalius broke without fear ; despite ecclesiastical
censure, great opposition in his own profession, and popular
fury, he studied his science by the only method that could
No peril daunted him.
To secure magive useful results.
terial for his investigations,
he haunted gibbets and charnelhouses, braving the fires of the Inquisition
and the virus of
the plague.
First of all men he began to place the science of
* For the promotion of medical science and practice,
century, by the universities,
see Baas, pp. 222-224.
especially
in the thirteenth
THE
SCIENTIFIC
STRUGGLE
FOR
ANATOMY.
51
human anatomy on its solid modern foundations-on
careful
examination
and observation
of the human body: this was
his first great sin, and it was soon aggravated
by one considered even greater.
Perhaps the most unfortunate
thing that has ever been
done for Christianity
is the tying it to forms of science which
are doomed and gradually sinking.
Just as, in the time of
Roger Bacon, excellent
men devoted all their energies to
binding Christianity
to Aristotle;
just as, in the time of
Reuchlin and Erasmus, they insisted on binding Christianity
to Thomas Aquinas ; so, in the time of Vesalius, such men
made every effort to link Christianity
to Galen.
The cry
has been the same in all ages; it is the same which we hear
in this age for curbing scientific studies : the cry for what is
Whether
standing for Aristotle
called “ sound learning.”
against Bacon, or for Aquinas against Erasmus, or for Galen
against Vesalius,
the cry is always for “ sound learning” :
the idea always has been that the older studies are “safe.”
At twenty-eight
years of age Vesalius gave to the world
his great work on human anatomy.
With it ended the old
and began the new; its researches,
by their thoroughness,
were a triumph of science ; its illustrations,
by their fidelity,
were a triumph of art.
To shield himself, as far as possible, in the battle which
he foresaw must come, Vesalius dedicated
the work to the
Emperor Charles V, and in his preface he argues for his
method, and against the parrot repetitions
of the medimval
text-books ; he also condemns the wretched anatomical preparations and specimens
made by physicians
who utterly
refused to advance beyond the ancient master.
The parrotlike repeaters of Galen gave battle at once.
After the manner of their time their first missiles were epithets ; and, the
vast arsenal of these having been eshausted, they began to
use sharper weapons-weapons
theologic.
In this case there were especial reasons why the theological authorities felt called upon to intervene.
First, there
was the old idea prevailing
in the Church that the dissection of the human body is forbidden to Christians:
this was
used with great force against Vesalius, but he at first gained
a temporary victory ; for, a conference of divines having been
52
FROM
MIRACLES
TO MEDICINE.
asked to decide whether dissection
of the human body is
sacrilege, gave a decision in the negative.
The reason was simple: the great Emperor
Charles V
had made Vesalius his physician
and could not spare him ;
but, on the accession of Philip II to the throne of Spain and
the Netherlands,
the whole scene changed.
Vesalius now
complained that in Spain he could not obtain even a human
skull for his anatomical investigations
: the medical and theological reactionists
had their way, and to all appearance they
have, as a rule, had it in Spain ever since.
As late as the
last years of the eighteenth
century an observant
English
traveller found that there were no dissections before medical
classes in the Spanish universities,
and that the doctrine of
the circulation
of the blood was still denied, more than a
century and a half after Sarpi and Harvey had proved it.
Another
theological
idea barred the path of Vesalius.
Throughout
the Middle Ages it was believed that there exists in man a bone imponderable,
incorruptible,
incombustible
-the
necessary nucleus of the resurrection
body. Belief in a
resurrection
of the physical body, despite St. Paul’s Epistle
to the Corinthians,
had been incorporated
into the formula
evolved during the early Christian centuries and known as
the Apostles’ Creed, and was held throughout
Christendom,
“ always, everywhere,
and by all.”
This hypothetical
bone
was therefore held in great veneration, and many anatomists
so much else,
sought to discover it; but Vesalius, revealing
did not find it. He contented
himself with saying that he
left the question regarding
the existence of such a bone to
the theologians.
He could not lie; he did not wish to fight
the Inquisition ; and thus he fell under suspicion.
The strength of this theological
point may be judged
from the fact that no less eminent a surgeon than Riolan
consulted
the executioner
to find out whether,
when he
burned a criminal, all the parts were consumed ; and only
then was the answer received which fatally undermined this
superstition.
Yet, in 1689 we find it still lingering in France,
Even as
stimulating opposition in the Church to dissection.
late as the eighteenth century, Bernouilli
having shown that
the living human body constantly
undergoes
a series of
changes, so that all its particles are renewed in a given num-
THE
SCIENTIFIC
STRUGGLE
FOR ANATOMY.
53
ber of years, so much ill feeling was drawn upon him, from
theologians,
who saw in this statement
danger to the doctrine of the resurrection
of the body, that for the sake of
peace he struck out his argument
on this subject from his
collected works.*
Still other enroachments
upon the theological
view were
made by the new school of anatomists,
and especially
by
During the Middle Ages there had been develVesalius.
oped various theological
doctrines
regarding
the human
body; these were based upon arguments showing what the
body azdg& to be, and naturally,
when anatomical
science
An example of such
showed what it is, these doctrines fell.
popular theological
reasoning is seen in a widespread belief
of the twelfth century, that, during the year in which the
.cross of Christ was captured by Saladin, children, instead of
having thirty or thirty-two
teeth as before, had twenty or
twenty-two.
So, too, in Vesalius’s time another doctrine of
this sort was dominant:
it had long been held that Eve, having been made by the Almighty
from a rib taken out of
Adam’s side, there must be one rib fewer on one side of
every man than on the other.
This creation
of Eve was a
* For permissions to dissect the human subject, given here and there during the
Middle Ages, see Roth’s An&as
VesaZz&s,Berlin, 1892, pp. 3, I3 et seq. For religious antipathies as a factor in the persecution of Vesalius, see the biagraphies by
Boerhaave and Albinos, 1725 ; Burggraeve’s ~tua’es, 1S41 ; also Haeser, Kingsley,
and the latest and most thorough of all, Roth, as above. Even Goethals, despite
the timidity natural to a city librarian in a town like Brussels, in which clerical
power is strong and relentless. feels obliged to confess that there was a certain admixture of religious hatred in the treatment of Vesalius.
See his Notice Biagraphiqur
SW Andd
Yes&
For the resurrection bone, see Roth, as above, pp. 154, 155,
and notes. For Vesalius, see especially Portal, F&t. de Z’Anatomie et de la CJzirurgie,
Paris, 1770, tome i, p. 407. For neglect of dissection and opposition to Harvey’s
discovery in Spain, see Townsend’s Travels, edition of 1792, cited in Buckle, History of Cidization
in BngZana’, vol. ii, pp. 74. 75. Also Henry Morley, in his CCPment Mad,
and Other Essap
For Bernouilli and his trouble with the theologians,
see Wolf, Biographien
zuv CuZtwgeschichte der Scheia,
vol. ii, p. 95. How different
Mundinus’s practice of dissection was from that of Vesalius may be seen by Cuvier’s careful statement that the entire number of dissections by the former was
three ; the usual statement is that there were but two. See Cuvier, Hid. a’es Sci,
Nat., tome ii, p. 7 ; also Sprengel, FrCdault, Hallam, and Littrk; also Whewell,
Hid. of the Inductive
Sciences, vol. iii, p, 328 ; also, for a very full statement regarding the agency of Mundinus in the progress of anatomy, see Portal, vol. i, pp.
209-216.
FROM
54
MIRACLES
TO
MEDICINE.
favourite subject with sculptors and painters, from Giotto,
who carved it upon his beautiful Campanile at Florence, to
the illuminators
of missals, and even to those who illustrated
Bibles and religious books in the first years after the invention of printing;
but Vesalius and the anatomists
who followed him put an end amon g thoughtful
men to this belief
in the missing rib, and in doing this dealt a blow at much
else in the sacred theory.
Naturally, all these considerations
brought the forces of ecclesiasticism
against the innovators
in anatomy.*
A new weapon was now forged:
Vesalius was charged
with dissecting
a living man, and, either from direct persecution, as the great majority of authors assert, or from indirect influences, as the recent apologists for Philip II admit,
he became a wanderer:
on a pilgrimage
to the Holy Land,
apparently
undertaken
to atone for his sin, he was shipwrecked, and in the prime of his life and strength
he was
lost to the world.
And yet not lost.
In this century a great painter has
again given him to us. By the magic of Hamann’s pencil
Vesalius again stands on earth, and we look once more into
his cell.
Its windows and doors, bolted and barred within,
betoken the storm of bigotry which rages without;
the crucifix, toward which he turns his eyes, symbolizes the spirit
in which he labours;
the corpse of the plague-stricken
beneath his hand ceases to be repulsive;
his very soul seems
to send forth rays from the canvas, which strengthen
us for
the good fight in this age.+
His death was hastened, if not caused, by men who conscientiously supposed that he was injuring religion : his poor,
blind foes aided in destroying
one of religion’s
greatest
apostles.
What was his influence on religion?
He substi* As to the supposed
of teeth, see the G&a Pi%i@pi
by
Father Franqois Duchesne, in Historic Franrorum Scriptortv, tom. v, Paris, 1649,
p. 24. For representations
of Adam created by the Almighty out of a pile of dust,
and of Eve created from a rib of Adam, see the earlier illustrations
in the Nu~mberg C’hronicZc. As to the relation of anatomy to theology as regards Adam’s rib,
see Roth, pp. 154, 155.
+ The original painting of Vesalius at work in his ce!l, by Hamann, is now at
Cornell University.
Augusti
change
F~ancorum Regis,
. . .
in the number
descripta a magistra Rigordo, 1219, edited
’
THEOLOGICAL
OPPOSITION
TO
INOCULATION.
55
tuted, for the repetition of worn-out theories, a conscientious
and reverent
search into the works of the great Power giving life to the universe ; he substituted, for representations
of the human structure
pitiful and unreal, representations
revealing truths most helpful to the whole human race.
The death of this champion seems to have virtually ended
Licenses to dissect soon began to be given by
the contest.
sundry popes to universities,
and were renewed at intervals
of from three to four years, until the Reformation
set in motion trains of thought
which did much to release science
from this yoke.*
X. THEOLOGICAL
TION,
OPPOSITION
AND
THE
USE
TO
OF
INOCULATION,
VACCINA-
AN/ESTHETICS.
I hasten now to one of the most singular struggles
of
Early in the last cenmedical science during modern times.
tury Boyer presented
inoculation
as a preventive
of smallpox in France, and thoughtful
physicians
in England, inspired by Lady Montagu and Maitland, followed his example.
Ultra-conservatives
in medicine took fright at once on both
sides of the Channel, and theology
was soon finding profound reasons against the new practice.
The French
theologians of the Sorbonne solemnly condemned it ; the English
theologians
were most loudly represented
by the Rev. Edward Massey, who in 1772 preached and published a sermon
In
entitled T/e Dangerous and Sinful Practice of lnocul’ation.
this he declared that Job’s distemper was probably confluent
smallpox ; that he had been inoculated
doubtless
by the
devil ; that diseases are sent by Providence
for the punishment of sin ; and that the proposed attempt to prevent them
is “ a diabolical operation.”
Not less vigorous was the sermon of the Rev. Mr. Delafaye, entitled InocuZatio7z an Ina’e* For a curious example of weapons drawn from Galen and used against VesaFor proofs that I have not overestilius, see Lewes, Life of Goethe, p. 343. note.
mared Vesalius. see Portal, u6i supra.
Portal speaks of him as “ Zeg/&e Zeph
a’roit
qu’eut 2’ Europse ” ; and again, “ Vede me parait 2492des pZus grands Rommes qui ait
exist/.”
For the charge that anatomists
dissected living men-against
men of sciFor the increased
ence before Vesalius’s time-see
Littre’s chapter on Anatomy.
liberty given anatomy by the Reformation,
see Roth’s Vesafiw, p. 33.
56
FROM
MIRACLES
TO MEDICINE.
fensi6Ze Practice.
This struggle
went on for thirty years.
It is a pleasure to note some churchmen-and
among them
Madox, Bishop of Worcester-giving
battle on the side of
right reason;
but as late as 1753 we have a noted rector
at Canterbury
denouncing inoculation from his pulpit in the
primatial city, and many of his brethren following his example.
The same opposition
was vigorous in Protestant
Scotland.
A large body of ministers joined in denouncing
the
new practice as “ hying in the face of Providence,”
and L(endeavouring to baffle a Divine judgment.”
On our own side of the ocean, also, this question had to
be fought out.
About the year 1721 Dr. Zabdiel Boylston,
* .
a physrcran in Boston, made an experiment
in inoculation,
one of his first subjects
being his own son.
He at once encountered bitter hostility, so that the selectmen
of the city
forbade him to repeat the experiment.
Foremost among his
opponents was Dr. Douglas, a Scotch physician, supported
by the medical profession
and the newspapers.
The violence of the opposing party knew no bounds ; they insisted
that inoculation was “ poisoning,” and they urged the authorities to try Dr. Boylston
for murder.
Having thus settled
his case for this world, they proceeded
to settle it for the
next, insisting that “for a man to infect a family in the morning with smallpox and to pray to God in the evening against
the disease is blasphemy ” ; that the smallpox is “a judgment of God on the sins of the people,” and that “ to avert
it is but to provoke him more ” ; that inoculation is “ an encroachment on the prerogatives
of Jehovah, whose right it is
Among the mass of scriptural texts
to wound and smite.”
most remote from any possible bearing on the subject one
was employed which was equally cogent against any use of
healing means in any disease-the
words of Hosea:
“ He
hath torn, and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and he will
bind us up.”
So bitter was this opposition
that Dr. Boylston’s
life was
in danger;
it was considered
unsafe for him to be out of his
house in the evening;
a lighted grenade was even thrown
into the house of Cotton Mather, who had favoured the new
practice, and had sheltered another clergyman
who had submitted himself to it.
THEOLOGICAL
OPPOSITION
TO
INOCULATION.
57
To the honour of the Puritan clergy of New England, it
should be said that many of them were Boylston’s strongest
supporters.
Increase and Cotton Mather had been among
the first to move in favour of inoculation,
the latter having
called Boylston’s
attention
to it; and at the very crisis of
affairs six of the leading clergymen
of Boston threw their
influence on Boylston’s side and shared the obloquy brought
upon him.
Although the gainsayers
were not slow to fling
into the faces of the Mathers their action regarding
witchcraft, urging
that their credulity
in that matter argued
credulity in this, they persevered,
and among the many services rendered
by the clergymen
of New England
to their
country this ought certainly
to be remembered;
for these
men had to withstand, shoulder to shoulder with Boylston
and Benjamin Franklin, the same weapons which were hurled
at the supporters of inoculation
in Europe-charges
of “unfaithfulness to the revealed law of God.”
The facts were soon very strong against the gainsayers :
within a year or two after the first experiment
nearly three
hundred persons had been inoculated by Boylston in Boston
and neighbouring
towns, and out of these only six had died ;
whereas, during the same period, gut of nearly six thousand
persons who had taken smallpox naturally, and had’received
only the usual medical treatment,
nearly one thousand had
died.
Yet even here the gainsayers
did not despair, and,
when obliged to confess the success of inoculation, they simply fell back upon a new argument, and answered : “ It was
good that Satan should be dispossessed
of his habitation
which he had taken up in men in our Lord’s day, but it was
not lawful that the children of the Pharisees should cast him
We must always have an eye
out by the help of Beelzebub.
to the matter of what we do as well as the result, if we inBut the facts
tend to keep a good conscience
toward God.”
were too strong;
the new practice made its way in the New
World as in the Old, though bit.ter opposition
continued,
and in no small degree on vague scriptural
grounds, for
more than twenty years longer.*
* For the general subject, see Sprengel, Nistoire de la Mhdecine, vol. vi, pp.
39-80. For the opposition of the Paris Faculty of Theology to inoculation, see
the JoucmaZ de Barbier, vol. vi, p. 294; also the Corres~ona’a~tcede Grimm et de
53
FROM
MIRACLES
TO
MEDICINE.
The steady evolution
of scientific
medicine
brings us
Here, too, sunnext to Jenner’s
discovery
of vaccination.
dry
vague survivals of theological
ideas caused many of the
Perhaps the
clergy to side with retrograde
physicians.
most virulent of Jenner’s enemies was one of his professional
brethren, Dr. Moseley, who placed on the title-page
of his
book, Lues BoviZLa, the motto, referring
to Jenner and his
foIlowers, “ Father, forgive them, for they know not what
they do ‘! : this book of Dr. Moseley was especially indorsed
In 1795 an Anti-vaccmation
Soby the Bishop of Dromore.
ciety was formed by physicians
and clergymen,
who called
on the people of Boston to suppress vaccination,
as “ bidding
defiance to Heaven itself, even to the will of God,” and deAs late
clared that “ the law of God prohibits the practice.”
as 1803 the Rev. Dr. Ramsden
thundered
against vaccination in a sermon before the University
of Cambridge,
mingling texts of SC ripture with calumnies against Jenner ; but
Plumptre
and the Rev. Rowland
Hill in England, Waterhouse in America, Thouret
in France, Sacco in Italy, ,and a
host of other good men and true, pressed forward, and at
last science, humanity, and right reason gained the victory.
Most striking
results quickly followed.
The diminution in
the number of deaths from the terrible scourge was amazing.
In Berlin, during the eight years following
1783, over four
thousand children died of the smallpox;
while during the
D&rot,
vol. iii, pp. 259 et q.
For bitter denunciations
of inoculation
by the
English clergy, and for the noble standagainstthem by Madox, see Baron, Life of
Jenner, vol. i, pp. 231, 232, and vol. ii, pp. 39, 40. For the strenuous
op@osition
of the same clergy, see Weld, History of the Royal Society, vol. i, p. 464, note ;
also, for its comical side, see Nichols’s Literary IZZustrations, vol. v, p. 800.
For
the same matter in Scotland, see Lecky’s History of the Eighteenth
Century, vol. ii,
p. 83. For New England,
see Green, X&tory of Medicine in. Massachusetts, Boston, 1881, pp. 58 et seq. ; also chapter x of the Memorial i%story of Boston, by the
same author and 0. W. Holmes.
For letter of Dr. Franklin,
see Massachusetts
Histo?icaZ CoZZeections,second series, vol. vii, p. 17. Several most curious publications issued during the heat of the inoculation
controversy have been kindly placed
in my hands by the librarians
of Harvard
College and of the Massachusetts
Historical Society, among them A R&y to Increase Mather, by John Williams, Boston, printed by J. Franklin,
1721, from which the above scriptural arguments are
cited.
For the terrible virulence of the smaIlpox in New England
up to the introduction of inoculation, see McMast’er, History of the People of the United States,
first edition, vol. i, p 30.
THEOLOGICAL
OPPOSITION
TO INOCULATION.
59
eight years following 1814, after vaccination had been largely
adopted, out of a larger number of deaths there were but
five hundred and thirty-five from this disease.
In Wiirtemberg, during the twenty-four
years following
1772, one in
thirteen of all the children died of smallpox, while during
the eleven years after 1822 there died of it only one in sixteen hundred.
In Copenhagen,
during twelve years before
the introduction
of vaccination,
fifty-five hundred persons
died of smallpox, and during the sixteen years after its introduction only one hundred and fifty-eight persons died of it
throughout
all Denmark.
In Vienna, where the average
yearly mortality from this disease had been over eight hundred, it was steadily and rapidly reduced, until in 1803 it had
fallen to less than thirty ; and in London,
formerly
so
afflicted by this scourge, out of all her inhabitants there died
As to the world at large, the result is
of it in 1890 but one.
summed up by one of the most honoured English physicians
of our time, in the declaration
that “Jenner has saved, is now
saving, and will continue
to save in all coming ages, more
lives in one generation
than were destroyed in all the wars
of Napoleon.”
It will have’ been noticed by those who have read this
history thus far that the record of the Church generally was
far more honourable
in this struggle
than in many which
preceded it: the reason is not difficult to find; the decline
of theology enured to the advantage of religion, and religion
gave powerful aid to science.
Yet there have remained some survivals both in Protestant&m and in Catholicism
which may be regarded with curiosity.
A small body of perversely
ingenious minds in the
medical profession in England have found a few ardent allies
among the less intellectual
clergy.
The Rev. Mr. Rothery
and the Rev. Mr. Allen, of the Primitive
Methodists, have
for sundry vague theological
reasons especially distinguished
themselves by opposition to compulsory
vaccination ; but it
is only just to say that the great body of the English clergy
have for a long time taken the better view.
Far more painful has been the recent history of the other
great branch of the Christian
Church-a
history developed
where it might have been least expected:
the recent annals
60
.
FROM
MIRACLES
TO
MEDICINE.
of the world hardly present a more striking antithesis between Religion and Theology.
On the religious
side few things in the history of the
Roman Church have been more beautiful than the conduct
of its clergy in Canada during the great outbreak of shipfever among immigrants at Montreal about the middle of the
present century.
Day and night the Catholic priesthood of
that city ministered
fearlessly to those victims of sanitary
ignorance ; fear of suffering and death could not drive these
ministers from their work; they laid down their lives cheerfully while carrying
comfort to the poorest and most ignorant of our kind : such was the record of their religion.
But
in ~885 a record was made by their theology.
In that year the
smallpox broke out with great virulence in Montreal.
The
Protestant population escaped almost entirely by vaccination:
but multitudes of their Catholic fellow-citizens,
under some
vague survival of the old orthodox ideas, refused vaccination
and suffered fearfully.
When at last the plague became so
serious that travel and trade fell off greatly and quarantine
began to be established in neighbouring
cities, an effort was
made to enforce compulsory
vaccination.
The result was,
that large numbers of the Catholic working population resisted and even threatened
bloodshed.
The clergy at first
tolerated and even encouraged this conduct : the Abbe Filiatrault, priest of St. James’s Church, declared in a sermon
that, “if we are afflicted with smallpox, it is because we had
a carnival last winter, feasting the flesh, which has offended
the Lord ; . . . it is to punish our pride that God has sent us
smallpox.”
The clerical press went further:
the &tendard
exhorted the faithful to take up arms rather than submit to
vaccination, and at least one of the secular papers was forced
to pander to the same sentiment.
The Board of Health
struggled against this superstition,
and addressed a circular
to the Catholic clergy, imploring
them to recommend
vaccination ; but, though two or three complied with this request, the great majority were either silent or openly hostile.
The Oblate Fathers, whose church was situated in the
very heart of the infected district,
continued to denounce
to rely on devovaccination ; the faithful were exhorted
tional exercises
of various sorts; under the sanction of the
THEO’LOGICAL
OPPOSITION
TO
61
INOCULATION.
hierarchy a great procession was ordered with a solemn appeal to the Virgin, and the use of the rosary was carefully
specified.
Meantime, the disease, which had nearly died out among
the Protestants,
raged with ever-increasing
virulence among
the Catholics ; and, the truth becoming more and more clear,
even to the most devout, proper measures were at last enforced and the plague was stayed, though not until there had
been a fearful waste of life among these simple-hearted
believers, and germs of scepticism planted in the hearts of their
children which will bear fruit for generations
to come.*
Another class of cases in which the theologic spirit has
allied itself with the retrograde
party in medical science is
found in the history
of certain
remedial
agents;
and first
may be named
cocaine.
As early as the middle of the sixteenth
century
the value
of coca had been discovered
in
South America
; the natives
of Peru prized
it highly,
and
two eminent
Jesuits, Joseph Acosta and Antonio
Julian, were
But the conservative
spirit in the
converted
to this view.
Church was too strong ; in 1567 the Second Council of Lima,
consisting
of bishops from all parts of South America, con_
demned it, and two years later came a royal decree declaring that (‘the notions entertained
by the natives regarding it
are an illusion of the devil.”
As a pendant to this singular mistake on the part of the
older Church came another committed by many Protestants.
In the early
years of the seventeenth
century the Jesuit missionaries in South America
learned from the natives the
value of the so-called
Peruvian
bark in the treatment
of
*
opposition of conscientious men to vaccination in England, see Baron,
as above ; also vol. ii, p. 43 ; also Duns’s Life of Simpson, London, 1873, pp. 248, 249 ; also Works of Sir J. Y. Simpson, vol. ii. For a multitude of statistics showing the diminution of smallpox after the introduction of vaccination, see Russell, p. 380. For the striking record in London for 1890, see an
article in the Rdin6urg~ Review for January, 1891. The general statement referred
For the
Life of Jenner,
For recent scatto was made in a speech some years since by Sir Spencer Wells.
tered cases of feeble opposition to vaccination by Protestant ministers, see William
For opposition of the Roman
White, Tke Great Delusion, London, 1885, passi?fi.
Catholic clergy and peasantry
of 1885, see the English,
in Canada
Canadian,
very temperate
and accurate
ing September
and October
to vaccination
and American
correspondence
of that year.
during the smallpox
newspapers,
in the New
plague
but especially
the
York Evening Post dur-
62
FROM
MIRACLES
TO
MEDICINE.
ague; and in 1638, the Countess of Cinchon, Regent of Peru,
having derived great benefit from the new remedy, it was
Although
its alkaloid, quinine, is
introduced
into Europe.
perhaps the nearest approach to a medical specific, and has
diminished the death rate in certain regions to an amazing
extent, its introduction
was bitterly opposed by many conservative
members
of the medical profession,
and in this
opposition large numbers of ultra-Prot.estants
joined, out of
hostility to the Roman Church.
In the heat of sectarian
feeling the new remedy was stigmatized
as “an invention of
and
so
strong
was
this
opposition
that it was
the devil ” ;
not introduced
into England until 1653, and even then its
use was long held back, owing mainly to anti-Catholic
feeling.
What the theological
method on the ultra-Protestant
side could do to help the world at this very time is seen in
the fact that, while this struggle was going on, Hoffmann
was attempting
to give a scientific
theory of the action
of the devil in causing Job’s boils.
This effort at a qunsiscientific
explanation
which should satisfy the theological
spirit, comical as it at first seems, is really worthy of serious
notice, because it must be considered
as the beginning
of
that inevitable
effort at compromise
which we see in the
history of every science
when it begins to appear triumphant.*
But I’ pass to a typical conflict in our days, and in a
Protestant
country.
In 1547, James
Young
Simpson,
a
Scotch physician, who afterward
rose to the highest eminence in his profession, having advocated
the use of anaesthetics in obstetrical
cases, was immediately
met by a storm
of opposition.
This hostility flowed from an ancient and
time-honoured
belief in Scotland.
As far back as the year
1591, Eufame Macalyane, a lady of rank, being charged with
.
* For the opposition of the South American Church authorities
to the introduction of coca, etc., see MartindaIe,
Coca, Cwzize, andi& Sai&, London, 1886, p. 7.
As to theological
and sectarian
resistance
to quinine, see Russ&, pp. r9). 253;
also Eccles ; also Meryon, History of Medicine, London, 1861, vol. i, p. 74, note.
For the great decrease in deaths by fever after the use of Peruvian bark began, see
statistical tables given in Russell, p. 252 ; and for Hoffmann’s attempt at compromise,
ibid., p. 294.
FINAL
BREAKING
AWAY
OF THE
THEOLOGICAL
THEORY.
63
seeking the aid of Agnes Sampson for the relief of pain at
the time of the birth of her two sons, was burned alive on
the Castle Hill of Edinburgh ; and this old theological
view
persisted
even to the middle of the nineteenth
century.
From pulpit after pulpit Simpson’s
use of chloroform
was
denounced
as impious and contrary
to Holy Writ;
texts
were cited abundantly,
the ordinary declaration
being that
to use chloroform
was“‘ to avoid one part of the primeval
curse on woman.”
Simpson wrote pamphlet after pamphlet
to defend the blessing which he brought into use; but he
seemed about to be overcome, when he seized a new weapon,
probably the most absurd by which a great cause was ever
won : “ My opponents
forget,”
he said, ‘( the twenty-first
verse of the second chapter of Genesis ; it is the record of
the first surgical
operation
ever performed,
and that text
proves that the Maker of the universe, before he took the
rib from Adam’s side for the creation of Eve, caused a deep
This was a stunning blow, but it
sleep to fall upon Adam.”
did not entirely kill the opposition ; they had strength
left
to maintain that the “deep sleep of Adam took place before
the introduction
of pain into the world-in
a state of innoBut now a new champion
intervened-Thomas
cence.”
Chalmers:
with a few pungent arguments
from his pulpit
he scattered
the enemy forever, and the greatest
battle of
This victory was won
science against suffering was won.
Wisely did those who raised the monunot less for religion.
ment at Boston to one of the discoverers
of amesthetics
inscribe upon its pedestal the words from our sacred text,
“This also cometh forth from the Lord of hosts, which is
wonderful in counsel, and excellent in working.” +
L
XI.
FINAL
BREAKING
AWAY
IN
OF
THE
THEOLOGICAL
While this development
of history
tral idea on which the whole theologic
was going on, the cenview rested-the
idea
* For the case of Eufame Macalyane, see Dalyell,
Scothnd, pp. 130, 133.
THEORY
MEDICINE.
Darker
Superstitions of
For the contest of Simpson with Scotch ecclesiastical
authorities, see Duns, Life of SirJ
5’. Simpson, London, 1873, pp. 215-222, and
256-260.
.
64
FROM
MIRACLES
TO MEDICINE.
of diseases as resulting from the wrath of God or malice of
Satan-was
steadily weakened ; and, out of the many things
which show this, one may be selected as indicating
the drift
of thought among theologians
themselves.
Toward the end of the eighteenth
century the most eminent divines of the American branch of the Anglican Church
framed their Book of Common Prayer.
Abounding
as it does
in evidences of their wisdom and piety, few things are more
noteworthy than a change made in the exhortation to the faithful to present themselves
at the communion.
While, in the
old form laid down in the English Prayer Book, the minister
was required to warn his flock not “ to kindle God’s wrath ”
or ‘(provoke him to plague us with divers diseases and sunform all this and
dry kinds of death,” from the American
more of similar import in various services was left out.
Since that day progress in medical science has been rapid
indeed, and at no period more so than during the last half of
the nineteenth century.
The theological
view of disease has steadily faded, and
the theological
hold upon medical education has been almost
entirely relaxed.
In three great fields, especially, discoveries
have been made which have done much to disperse
the
First,
there
has
come
knowledge
atmosphere
of miracle.
regarding the relation between
imagination
and medicine,
which, though still defective, is of great importance.
This
relation has been noted during the whole history of the science.
When the soldiers of the Prince of Orange, at the
siege of B&da in 1625, were dying of scurvy by scores, he
sent to the physicians “ two or three small vials filled with a
decoction of camomile, wormwood, and camphor, gave out
that it was a very rare and precious
medicine-a
medicine
of such virtue that two or three drops sufficed to impregnate
a gallon of water, and that it had been obtained from the
East with great difficulty
and danger.”
This statement,
made with much solemnity, deeply impressed
the soldiers;
they took the medicine eagerly, and great numbers recovered rapidly.
Again, two centuries
later, young Humphry
Davy, being employed to apply the bulb of the thermometer
to the tongues of certain patients at Bristol after they had
inhaled various gases as remedies for disease, and finding
FINAL BREAKING
AWAY
OF THE
THEOLOGICAL
THEORS.
65
that the patients supposed this application
of the thermometer-bulb was the cure, finally wrought cures by this application alone, without any use of the gases whatever.
Innumerable cases of this sort have thrown a flood of light
upon such cures as those wrought by Prince Hohenlohe,
by
the (‘ metallic tractors,” and by a multitude of other agencies
temporarily
in vogue, but, above all, upon the miraculous
cures which in past ages have been so frequent and of which
a few survive.
The second department
is that of hypnotism.
Within
the last half-century
many scattered
indications
have been
collected and supplemented
by thoughtful,
patient investigators of genius, and especially
by Braid in England and
Here, too, great inroads have been made
Charcot in Prance.
upon the province
hitherto sacred to miracle, and in 18%
the cathedral preacher, Steigenberger,
of Augsburg, sounded
an alarm.
He declared
his fears “lest accredited
Church
miracles lose their hold upon the public,” denounced hypnotism as a doctrine of demons, and ended with the singular
argument that, inasmuch
as hypnotism
is avowedly
incapable of explaining
all the wonders of history, it is idle to
consider it at all.
But investigations
in hypnotism
still go
on, and may do much in the twentieth
century to carry the
world yet further from the realm of the miraculous.
In a third field science has won a striking series of victories.
Bacteriology,
beginning in the researches
of Leeuwenhoek in the seventeenth
century,
continued
by 0. F.
Miiller in the eighteenth,
and developed
or applied with
.wonderful skill by Ehrenberg,
Cohn, Lister, Pasteur, Koch,
Billings, Bering, and their compeers
in the nineteenth, has
explained the origin and proposed the prevention or cure of
various diseases widely prevailing, which until recently have
been generally held to be “ inscrutable providences.”
Finally,
the closer study of psychology,
especially in its relations to
folklore, has revealed
processes
involved in the development of myths and legends : the phenomena
of “ expectant
attention,” the tendency
to marvel-mongering,
and the feeling of “ joy in believing.”
In summing up the history of this long struggle between
science and theology, two main facts are to be noted : First,
33
66
FROM
MIRACLES
TO
MEDICINE,
that in proportion
as the world approached
the “ages of
faith ” it receded from ascertained
truth, and in proportion
as the world has receded from the “ages of faith ” it has
approached ascertained
truth ; secondly, that, in proportion
as the grasp of theology upon education tightened, medicine
declined, and in proportion as that grasp has relaxed, medicine has been developed.
The world is hardly beyond the beginning
of medical
discoveries,
yet they have already taken from theology what
was formerly its strongest
province-sweeping
away from
this vast field of human effort that belief in miracles which
for more than twenty centuries has been the main stumblingblock in the path of medicine ; and in doing this they have
cleared higher paths not only for science, but for religion.*
* For the rescue of medical education
from the control of theology, especially
in France, see Rambaud,
La CiviZisation Confemporaine en I;ranre,
pp. 682, 683.
For miraculous
cures wrought by imagination,
see Tuke, Zn@ence
of iWindon
Body, vol. ii. For the opposition to scientific study of hypnotism, see Hypnotismus
zfnd Wunajr : ein
Vortrag,
diger, Augsburg,
1888,
recent
regarding
statement
De In Suggestion
Paris,
London
1889,
mit
reviewed
U’eiterungen,
in
the development
et du SomnambuZisnze
chap. ii.
Graphic
Max
February
of studies
dans
As to joy in believing
for January
van
Science,
Steigenberger,
15,
Dompre-
p. 127.
in hypnotism,
For
a
see Liegeois,
aver Za Juri@rudence,
Zeurs rapports
and
1889,
exaggerating
marvels,
see in the
2, 1892,
an account of Hindu jugglers by “ Professor”
He shows that the Hindu performances
Hofmann, himself an expert conjurer.
have been grossly and persistently
exaggerated
in the accounts of travellers ; that
they are easily seen through, and greatly inferior to the jugglers’
The eminent Prof. De Gubernatis,
day in European
capitals.
nessed the Hindu performances,
tricks seen every
who also had wit-
assured the present writer that the current accounts
As to the miraculous in general, the famous
of them were monstrously exaggerated.
Essay of Hume holds a most important
place in the older literature
of the subject
but, for perhaps the most remarkable
of all discussions
of it, see Conyers Middleton, D. D., A Free Inquiry into the Mirncuious
Powers which we supposed to have
For probably the most judicially
subsisted in. the Christian Church, London, 1749.
fair discussion,
k’ationalism
see Lecky,
ZZistoory of Europeax
in Ewmope, vol. i, chaps.
Morals, vol. i, chap. iii ; also his
i and ii ; and for perhaps the boldest and
see Max Miiller, Phykzl
Religion, being the
most suggestive of recent statements,
Gifford Lectures before the University of Glasgow for 1890, London, 1891, lecture
xiv.
See also, for very cogent statement, and arguments, Matthew Arnold’s Litemtare and Dogma,
especially
and force, Prof. Osler’s
ence for March
27, 1891.
chap. v, and, for a recent
Addrpss
before the/ohm
Hop&s
utterance
of great
University,
clearness
given
in Sci-
;
CHAPTER
FROM
I. THE
1,
PI’
THEOLOGICAL
I;ETICH
VIEW
XIV.
TO NYGIE.NE.
OF EPIDEMICS
AND
SANITATION.
A VERY striking feature in recorded history has been the
recurrence
of great pestilences.
Various indications
in ancient times show their frequency, while the famous description of the plague of Athens given by Thucydides,
and the
discussion of it by Lucretius, exemplify
their severity.
In
the Middle Ages they raged from time to time throughout
Europe : such plagues as the Black Death and the sweating
sickness swept off vast multitudes, the best authorities
esti.
mating that of ~the former, at the middle of the fourteenth
century, more than half the population of England died, and
that twenty-five millions of people perished in various parts
of Europe.
In 1552 sixty-seven
thousand patients died of
the plague at Paris alone, and in I 580 more than twenty thousand.
The great plague in England and other parts of Europe in the seventeenth
century was also fearful, and that
which swept the south of Europe in the early part of the
eighteenth century, as well as the invasions by the cholera at
,various times during the nineteenth,
while less terrible than
those of former years, have left a deep impress upon the imaginations of men.
From the earliest
records
we find such pestilences
atThis
tributed to the wrath or malice of unseen powers.
had been the prevailing
view even in the most cultured
ages before the establishment
of Christianity
: in Greece and
Rome especially, plagues of various sorts were attributed to
the wrath of the gods; in Judea, the scriptural
records of
various plagues sent upon the earth by the Divine fiat as a
punishment for Lsin show the continuance
of this mode of
67
-
1
,
68
FROM
FETICH
TO
HYGIENE,
thought.
Among many examples and intimations of this in
our sacred literature,
we have the epidemic which carried
off fourteen thousand seven hundred of the children of Israel, and which was only stayed by the prayers and offerings
of Aaron, the high priest ; the destruction
of seventy thousand men in the pestilence by which King David was punished for the numbering of Israel, and which was only stopped
when the wrath of Jahveh was averted by burnt-offerings
;
the plague threatened
by the prophet Zechariah, and that
delineated in the Apocalypse.
From these sources this current of ideas was poured into the early Christian Church,
and hence it has been that during nearly twenty centuries
since the rise of Christianity,
and down to a period within
living memory,
at the appearance
of any pestilence
the
Church authorities,
instead of devising sanitary measures,
have very generally
preached
the necessity
of immediate
atonement for offences against the Almighty.
This view of the early Church was enriched greatly by a
new development
of theological
thought regarding the powers of Satan and evil angels, the declaration
of St. Paul that
the gods of antiquity were devils being cited as its sufficient
warrant.*
Moreover,
comets, falling stars, and earthquakes
were
thought, upon scriptural
authority, to be “signs and wonders “-evidences
of the Divine wrath, heralds of fearful visitations ; and this belief, acting powerfully upon the minds of
millions, did much to create a panic-terror
sure to increase
epidemic disease wherever it broke forth.
* For plague during the Peloponnesian war, see Thucydides, vol. ii, pp. 47-55,
and vol. iii, p. 87. For a general statement regarding this and other plagues in ansee vol. i,
cient times. see Lucretius, vol. vi, pp. 1090 et seq. ; and for a translation,
p. 179. in Munro’s edition of 1586.
For early views of sanitary science in Greece
and Rome, see Forster’s 1ngui7y. in T,‘le PantpAk&%eer, vol. xxiv, p. 404. For the
Greek view of the interference
of the gods in rdisease, especially in pestilence, see
Grate’s ~istoy, of Greece,vol. i, pp. 251, 485, and vol. vi, p. 213 ; see also HeroFor the Hebrew view of the same interferdotus, 1i.b. iii, c. xxxiii, and elsewhere.
ence by the Almighty, see especially
Numbers
xi, 4-34 ; also xvi, 49 ; I Samuel
xxiv ; also Psalm cvi, 29 ; also the well-known texts in Zechariah
and Revelation.
For St. Paul’s declaration
that the gods of the heathen are devils, see I Cor. x, 20.
As to the earlier origin of the plague in Egypt, see Haeser,‘Lehrbuch
der GescAichte
&r Me&in und deu e$idemischen Krankheikn,
Jena, 1875-‘82, vol iii, pp. 15 et seq.
THEOLOGICAL
VIEW
OF EPIDEMICS
AND SANITATION.
69
The main cause of this immense sacrifice of life is now
known to have been the want of hygienic precaution,
both
in the Eastern
centres, where various plagues were developed, and in the European towns through which they spread.
And here certain theological
reasonings came in to resist the
evolution of a proper sanitary theory.
Out of the Orient
had been poured into the thinking of western Europe the
theological
idea that the abasement of man adds to the glory
of God; that indignity to the body may secure salvation to
the soul ; hence, that cleanliness
betokens
pride and filthiness humility.
Living in filth was regarded
by great numbers of holy men, who set an example to the Church and to
society, as an evidence of sanctity.
St. Jerome and the Breviary of the Roman Church dwell with unction on the fact
that St. Hilarion lived his whole life long in utter physical
uncleanliness ; St. Athanasius
glorifies
St. Anthony because
he had never washed his feet; St. Abraham’s
most striking
evidence of holiness was that for fifty years he washed neither his hands nor his feet; St. Sylvia never washed any
part of her body save her fingers;
St. Euphraxia
belonged
to a convent in which the nuns religiously
abstained
from
bathing ; St. Mary of Egypt was etninent for filthiness;
St.
Simon Stylites
was in this respect unspeakable-the
least
that can be said is, that he lived in ordure and stench intol.
erable to his visitors.
The Lives of t/le Saints dwell with
complacency
on the statement
that, when sundry Eastern
monks showed a disposition
to wash themselves,
the Almighty manifested
his displeasure
by drying up a neighbouring stream until the bath which it had supplied was
destroyed.
The religious world was far indeed from the inspired utterance attributed to John Wesley, that “ cleanliness is near
akin to godliness.”
For century after century the idea prevailed that filthiness was akin to holiness ; and, while we may
well believe that the devotion of the clergy to the sick was
one cause why, during the greater plagues, they lost so large
a proportion of their numbers, we can not escape the conclusion that their want of cleanliness
had much to do with it.
In France, during the fourteenth
century, Guy de Chauliac,
the great physician of his time, noted particularly
that cer-
:
70
FROM
FETICH
TO HYGIENE.
tain Carmelite monks suffered especially from pestilence, and
that they were especially
filthy.
During the Black Death
no less than nine hundred Carthusian
monks fell victims in
one group of buildings.
Naturally, such an example set by the venerated
leaders
of thought exercised great influence throughout
society, and
all the more because it justified the carelessness
and sloth to
which ordinary humanity is prone.
In the principal towns
of Europe, as well as in the country at large, down to a
recent period, the most ordinary sanitary precautions
were
neglected,
and pestilences
continued to be attributed to the
wrath of God or the malice of Satan.
As to the wrath of
God, a new and powerful impulse was given to t.his belief in
the Church toward the end of the sixth century by St. Gregory the Great.
In 590, when he was elected Pope, the city
of Rome was suffering from a dreadful pestilence : the people were dying by thousands;
out of one procession imploring the mercy of Heaven no less than eighty persons died
within an hour: what the heathen in an earlier epoch had
attributed
to Apollo was now attributed
to Jehovah,
and
chroniclers
tell us that fiery darts mere seen flung from
heaven into the devoted city.
But finally, in the midst of all
this horror, Gregory,
at the head of a penitential procession,
saw hovering
over the mausoleum of Hadrian the figure of
the archangel
Michael, who was just sheathing
a flaming
sword, while three angels were heard chanting
the Regina
Cmli. The legend continues that the Pope immediately broke
forth into hallelujahs for this sign that the plague was stayed,
and, as it shortly afterward became less severe, a chapel was
built at the summit of the mausoleum
and dedicated
to St.
Michael;
still later, above the whole was erected the colossal statue of the archangel
sheathing
his sword, which still
stands to perpetuate
the legend.
Thus the greatest
of
Rome’s ancient funeral monuments was made to bear testimony to this medieval
belief ; the mausoleum of Hadrian
became the castle of St. Angelo.
A legend like this, claiming to date from the greatest of the early popes, and vouched
for by such an imposing
monument,-had
undoubtedly
a
marked effect upon the dominant theology throughout
Europe, which was constantly
developing
a great body of
THEOLOGICAL
VIEW
OF
EPIDEMICS
AND
SANITATION.
71
thought regarding
the agencies by which the Divine wrath
might be averted.
First among these agencies,
naturally,
were evidences
of devotion, especially gifts of land, money, or privileges to
churches, monasteries,and
shrines-the
seats of fetiches which
it was supposed had wrought
cures or might work them.
The whole evolution of modern history, not only ecclesiastical but civil, has been largely affected by the wealth transIt was noted that in
ferred to the clergy at such periods.
the fourteenth
century, after the great plague, the Black
Death, had passed, an immensely increased proportion of the
landed and personal property
of every European
country
Well did a great ecclesiastic
was in the hands of the Church.
remark that “ pestilences are the harvests of the ministers of
God.” *
Other modes of propitiating
the higher powers were penitential processions,
the parading of images of the Virgin or
of saints through plague-stricken
towns, and fetiches innuVery noted in the thirteenth and fourteenth
centumerable.
ries were the processions of the flagellants, trooping through
various parts of Europe, scourging their naked bodies, shrieking the penitential
psalms, and often running from wild excesses of devotion to the maddest orgies.
Sometimes, too, plagues were attributed
to the wrath of
lesser heavenly powers.
Just as, in former times, the fury of
“ far-darting
Apollo ” was felt when his name was not re_
II
* For triumphant
mention of St. Hilarion’s
filth, see the Roman &ev&-y
for
October arst ; and for details, see S. Hieronymus,
Kta S. Hi&i&s
Eremitq
in
Migne, Patrologia, vol. xxiii. For Athanasius’s reference to St. Anthony’s filth, see
works of St. Athanasius
in, The Nicene and Post-Nicene
F&.ers, second series, vol.
iv, p. 209. For the filthiness of the other saints named, see citations from the
Lives of ihe Saints, in Lecky’s I-lisfory of European
Morab, vol. ii, pp. 117, 118.
For Guy de Chauliac’s observation
on the filthiness of Carmelite
monks and their
great losses by pestilence, see Meryon, History of Medicine, vol. i, p. 257. For the
mortality among the Carthusian
monks in time of plague, see Mrs. Lecky’s very
interesting Visit to the Grand Chartreuse, in The b%zetemth
Centqy for March,
1891. For the plague at Rome in 590, the legend regarding
the fiery darts, mentioned by Pope Gregory himself, and that of the castle of St. Angelo, see Gregorovius, Geschichte a’er Stadt Rom im MitteZaZtev, vol. ii, pp. 26-35 ; also Story, CastZe
of St. AngeZo, etc., chap. ii. For the remark that “ pestilences
are the harvest of
the ministers of God,” see reference
to Charlevoix,
in Southey, History of Brazil,
vol. ii, p. 254, cited in Buckle, vol. i, p. 130, note.
72
FROM
FETICH
TO HYGIENE.
\
spectfully treated by mortals, so, in 1680, the Church authorities at Rome discovered that the plague then raging resulted
from the anger of St. Sebastian
because no monument had
been erected to him. Such a monument was therefore placed
in the Church of St. Peter ad Vincula, and the plague ceased.
So much for the endeavour
to avert the wrath of the
heavenly powers.
On the other hand, theological
reasoning
no less subtle was used in thwarting
the malice of Satan.
This idea, too, came from far.
In the sacred books of India
and Persia, as well as in our own, we find the same theory
of disease, leading to similar means of cure.
Perhaps the
most astounding
among Christian
survivals
of this theory
and its resultant
practices
was seen during the plague at
Rome in 1522.
In that year, at that centre of divine illumination, certain
people, having reasoned
upon the matter,
came to the conclusion that this great scourge was the result
of Satanic malice ; and, in view of St. Paul’s declaration that
the ancient gods were devils, and of the theory that the ancient gods of Rome were the devils who had the most reason
to punish that city for their dethronement,
and that the great
amphitheatre
was the chosen haunt of these demon gods, ah
ox decorated with garlands, after the ancient heathen manner, was taken in procession to the Colosseum and solemnly
sacrificed.
Even this proved vain, and the Church authorities then ordered expiatory processions
and ceremonies
to
propitiate
the Almighty,
the Virgin, and the saints, who
had been offended by this temporary
effort to bribe their
enemies.
But this sort of theological
reasoning developed an idea
far more disastrous,
and this was that Satan, in causing
pestilences,
used as his emissaries
especially
Jews
and
The proof of this belief in the case of the Jews
witches.
was seen in the fact that they escaped with a less percentage
of disease than did the Christians in the great plague periods.
This was doubtless due in some measure to their remarkable
sanitary system, which had probably originated thousands of
years before in Egypt, and had been handed down through
Certainly
they observed
Jewish lawgivers
and statesmen.
more careful sanitary rules and more constant abstinence
from dangerous foods than was usual among Christians;
but
THEOLOGICAL
VIEW
OF
EPIDEMICS
AND
SANITATION.
,j
the public
at large could not understand
so simple a cause,
and jumped
to the conclusion
that their immunity
resulted
from protection
by Satan, and that this protection
was repaid
and the pestilence
caused
by their wholesale
poisoning
of
As a result
of this mode of thought,
attempts
Christians.
were made in all parts of Europe to propitiate
the Almighty,
to thwart
Satan, and to stop the plague
by torturing
and
Throughout
Europe during great pesmurdering
the Jews.
tilences we-hear of extensive
burnings
of this devoted
people.
In Bavaria,
at the time of the Black Death, it is computed
that twelve thousand
Jews thus perished
; in the small town
of Erfurt
the number
is said to have been three thousand;
in Strasburg,
the Rue Brulee
remains
as a monument
to the
two thousand
Jews burned
there for poisoning
the wells and
causing
the plague
of 1348 ; at the royal castle of Chinon,
near Tours, an immense
trench
was dug, filled with blazing
wood, and in a single day one hundred
and sixty Jews were
Everywhere
in continental
Europe this mad perseburned.
cution
went on ; but it is a pleasure
to say that one great
churchman,
Pope Clement
VI, stood against
this popular
unreason,
and, so far as he could bring his influence
to bear
on the maddened
populace,
exercised
it in favour of mercy
to these supposed
enemies
of the Almighty.*
* For an early conception in India of the Divinity acting through medicine, see
translated by Telang, p. 82, in Max Mtiller’s Sacred Books of
For the necessity of religious means of securing knowledge of medicine,
the East.
see the AnugQa, translated
by Telang, in Max Miiller’s Sacred Boo& of the East,
For ancient Persian ideas of sickness as sent by the spirit of evil and to be
p. 388.
cured by spells, but not excluding medicine and surgery, and for sickness generally
as caused by the evil principle in demons, see the Zena’-Avesta, Darmesteter’s
translation, introductionpnssim,
but especially p. xciii.
For diseases wrought by witchcraft, see the same, pp. 230, 293.
On the preference
of spells in healing over
medicine and surgery, see Zena’-Avesta, vol. i, pp. 85, 86. For healing by magic in
ancient Greece, see, e. g., the cure of Ulysses in the Odyssey, “They stopped the
black blood by a spell ” (Odyssey, xix, 457).
For medicine in Egypt as partly
priestly and partly in the hands of physicians, see Rawlinson’s Hero&us, vol. ii, p.
136, note.
For ideas of curing of diseases by expulsion of demons still surviving
among various tribes and nations of Asia, see J. G. Fraser, The GoZ&z Bough : a
.!%%dyof b?zparatiiue
&digion, London,
1890, pp. I&$-192. For the Flagellants
and their processions at the time of the Black Death, see Lea, History of t/ze Zquiof the Jews in
sition, New York, 1888, vol. ii, pp. 381 et seq. For the persecution
time of pestilence, see ibid., p. 379 and following, with authorities
in the notes.
For the expulsion of the Jews from Padua, see the Acta Sanctorum,
September,
tom. vii, p. 893.
The Bhagavadgt^t&,
74
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Yet, as late as 1527, the people of Pavia, being threatened
with plague, appealed to St. Bernardino
of Feltro, who during his life had been a fierce enemy of the Jews, and they
passed a decree promising
that if the saint,would
avert the
pestilence
they would expel the Jews from the city.
The
saint apparently accepted
the bargain, and in due time the
Jews were expelled.
As to witches, the reasons for believing them the cause
of pestilence also came from far.
This belief, too, had been
poured mainly from Oriental sources into our sacred books
and thence into the early Church, and was strengthened
by
a whole line of Church
authorities,
fathers, doctors, and
saints ; but, above all, by the great bull, Summis Des&
rantes, issued by Pope Innocent
VIlI, in 1484. This utterance from the seat of St. Peter infallibly
committed
the
Church to the idea that witches are a great cause of disease,
storms, and various ills which afflict humanity ; and the
Scripture
on which the action recommended
against witches
in this papal bull, as well as in so many sermons and treatises
for centuries
afterward,
was based, was the famous text,
This idea persisted
“ Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”
long, and the evolution of it is among the most fearful things
in human history.*
* On the plagues generally, see Hecker, ~pzYiemics of the M&Me Ages, pa&m ;
but especially Haeser, as above, III. Band, pp. 1-202 ; also Sprengel, Baas, Isensee,
et aL For brief statement showing the enormous loss of life in these plagues, see
Lit&, M&e&e et M&cins, Paris, 1875, pp. 3 et seq. For a summary of the effects
of the black plague throughout England, see Green’s .S&rt History of ih English
PeopZe, chap. v. For the mortality in the Paris hospitals, see Desmazes, SuppZices,
Prisons
et Graces en France, Paris, 1866. For striking descriptions of plaguestricken cities, see the well-known passages in Thucydides, Boccaccio, De Foe, and,
For examples of averting the plagues by pro_
above all, Manzoni’s Promessi Sposi.
,
cessions, see Leopold Delisle, Etudes SW Ia Condition de la CZasse Agyicole, etc., en
For the anger of St.
Normandie
au Moyen Age, p. 630; also Fort, chap. xxiii.
Sebastian as a cause of the plague at Rome, and its cessation when a monument
had been erected to him, see Paulus Diaconus, cited in Gregorovius, vol. ii, p. 165.
For the sacrifice of an ox in the Colosseum to the ancient gods as a means of averting the plague of 1522, at Rome, see Gregorovius, vol. viii, p. 390. As to massacres of the Jews in order to avert the wrath of God in pestilence, see L’EcoZe et
Za Science, Paris, 1887, p. 178 ; also Hecker, and especially Hoeniger, Gang und
Ve&eitung des Schwarzen Todes in DeutscAZund, Berlin, 1880. For a long list of
towns in which burnings of Jews took place for this imaginary cause, see pp. 7-11.
As to absolute want of sanitary precautions, see Hecker, p. 292. As to condemna-
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In Germany
its development
was especially
terrible.
From the middle of the sixteenth
century to the middle of
the seventeenth,
Catholic
and Protestant
theologians
and
ecclesiastics
vied with each other in detecting witches guilty
of producing sickness or bad weather;
women were sent to
torture and death by thou’sands, and with them, from time
to time, men and children.
On the Catholic side sufficient
warrant for this work was found in the bull of Pope Innocent VIII, and the bishops’ palaces of south Germany
be‘came
shambles,-the
lordly prelates of Salzburg, Wiirzburg,
and Bamberg taking the lead in this butchery.
In north Germany
Protestantism
was just as conscienIt based its theory
and practice
toward
tiously cruel.
witches directly upon the Bible, and above all on the great
text which has cost the lives of so many myriads of innocent
shalt not suffer a witch
men, women, and children, “Thou
Naturally the Protestant authorities strove to show
to live.”
that Protestantism
was no less orthodox in this respect than
jurists as Carpzov, DamCatholicism ; and such theological
An eminent
houder, and Calov did their work thoroughly.
authority
on this subject
estimates the number of victims
thus sacrificed during that century in Germany alone at over
a hundred thousand.
Among the methods of this witch activity especially credited in central and southern Europe was the anointing
of
city walls and pavements with a diabolical
unguent causing
pestilence.
In 1530 Michael Caddo was executed with fearful tortures for thus besmearing
the pavements of Geneva.
But far more dreadful was the torturing
to death of a large
body of people at Milan, in the following
century, for protion by strong religionistsof medical means in the plague, see Fort, p. 130. For a
detailed account of the action of Popes Eugene IV, Innocent VIII, and other popes,
against witchcraft, ascribing to it storms and diseases, and for the bull Summis Desideran@~, see the chapters on lcfeteorology and Mqic in this series.
The text of
the bull is given in the MaZZeus MaZe$arum,
in Binsfeld, and in Roskoff, Gesc!zicAte
des TeufeZ~, Leipzig, 1869, vol. i, pp. zzz--225, and a good summary and analysis of
it in Soldan, Grsc&Aie der Hexenprocesse.
For a concise and admirable statement
of the contents and effects of the bull, see Lea, History of the Inquisition,
vol. iii,
pp,40 et seq. ; and for the best statement known to me of lhe general subject, Prof.
George L. Burr’s paper on The Literature
of Witclrc~af, read before the American
Historical Association at Washington,
1890.
.
76
FROM
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ducing the plague by anointing the walls; and a little later
similar punishments
for the same crime were administered
in Toulouse
and other cities.
The case in Milan may be
briefly summarized as showing the ideas on sanitary science
of all classes, from highest to lowest, in the seventeenth
century.
That city was then under the control of Spain ;
and, its authorities
having received
notice from the Spanish Government
that certain
persons suspected
of witchcraft had recently
left Madrid, aud had perhaps gone to
Milan to anoint the walls, this communication
was dwelt
.upon in the pulpits as another evidence of that Satanic malice
which the Church alone had the means of resisting, and the
people were thus excited and put upon the alert.
One morning, in the year 1630, an old woman, looking out of her window, saw a man walking along the street and wiping his
fingers upon the walls; she immediately
called the attention
of another old woman, and they agreed that this man must
be one of the diabolical anointers.
It was perfectly evident
to a person under ordinary conditions that this unfortunate
man was simply tryin g to remove from his fingers the ink
gathered while writing from the ink-horn which he carried
in his girdle;
but this explanation was too simple to satisfy
those who first observed him or those who afterward tried
him : a mob was raised and he was thrown into prison.
Being tortured, he at first did not know what to confess; but,
on inquiring from the jailer and others, he learned what the
charge was, and, on being again subjected to torture utterly
beyond endurance, he confessed everything
which was sugand,
on
being
tortured
again
and again to
gested to him ;
give the names of his accomplices,
he accused, at hazard, the
first people in the city whom he thought of. These, being
arrested and tortured
beyond endurance, confessed and implicated a still greater number, until members of the foremost families were included in the charge.
Again and again
all these unfortunates
were tortured
beyond
endurance.
Under paganism, the rule regarding torture had been that it
should not be carried beyond human endurance;
and we
therefore
find Cicero ridiculing
it as a means of detecting
crime, because a stalwart criminal of strong nerves might
resist it and go free, while a physically
delicate man, though
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77
Hence it was that
innocent, would be forced to confess.
under paganism
a limit was imposed to the torture which
could be administered;
but, when Christianity
had become
predominant throughout
Europe, torture was developed with
There had been evolved a
a cruelty never before known.
doctrine of “ excepted cases “-these
“ escepted cases ” being
especially heresy and witchcraft;
for by a very simple and
logical process of theological
reasoning
it was held that
Satan would give supernatural
strength to his special devotees-that
is, to heretics and witches-and
therefore that, in
dealing with them, there should be no limit to the torture.
The result was in this particular
case, as in tens of thousands
besides, that the accused confessed everything
which could
be suggested
to them, and often in the delirium of their
agony confessed far more than all that the zeal of the prosecutors could suggest.
Finally, a great number of worthy
people were sentenced to the most cruel death which could
be invented.
The records of their trials and deaths are
frightful.
The treatise
which in recent years
has first
brought to light in connected form an authentic
account of
the proceedings
in this affair, and which gives at the end engravings of the accused subjected
to horrible tortures on
their way to the stake and at the place of execution itself, is
one of the most fearful monuments of theological
reasoning
and human folly.
To cap the climax, after a poor apothecary
had been tortured into a confession
that he had made the magic ointment, and when he had been put to death with the most
exquisite refinements
of torture, his family were obliged to
take another name, and were driven out from the city ; his
house was torn down, and on its site was erected ‘( The Column of Infamy,” which remained on this spot until, toward
the end of the eighteenth
century, a party of young radicals, probably influenced by the reading of Beccaria,
sallied
forth one night and leveled this pious monument
to the
ground.
Herein was seen the culmination
and decline of the bull
Summis Desidrrantes.
It had been issued by him whom a
majority
of the Christian
world believes
to be infallible
in his teachings to the Church as regards faith and morals;
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FROM
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HYGIENE.
yet here was a deliberate
utterance in a matter of faith and
morals which even children now know to be utterly untrue.
Though Beccaria’s
book on Crimes nnd Punis/zments, with its
declarations
against torture,
was placed by the Church authorities upon the Index, and though the faithful throughout
the Christian
world were forbidden
to read it, even this
could not prevent the victory of truth over this infallible
utterance of Innocent VIII.*
As the seventeenth
century
went on, ingenuity
in all
parts of Europe seemed devoted to new developments
of
fetichism.
A very curious monument
of this evolution
in
Italy exists in the Royal Gallery of Paintings
at Naples,
where may be seen several pictures representing
the measures taken to save the city from the plague during the seventeenth century, but especially
from the plague of 1656.
One enormous canvas gives a curious example of the theological doctrine of intercession
between man and his Maker,
spun out to its logical length.
In the background
is the
plague-stricken
city : in the foreground the people are praying to the city authorities
to avert the plague; the city authorities
are praying to the Carthusian
monks; the monks
are praying
to St. Martin, St. Bruno, and St. Januarius;
these three saints in their turn are praying to the Virgin ;
the Virgin prays to Christ ; and Christ prays to the Almighty.
Still another picture represents the people, led by the priests,
executing
with horrible
tortures
the Jews, heretics,
and
witches who were supposed to cause the pestilence
of 1656,
while in the heavens the Virgin and St. Januarius
are inter* As to the fearful effects of the papal bull .%mmis Desia’er~ntes in south Germany, as to the Protestant
severities in north Germany, as to the immense number
of women and children put to death for witchcraft in Germany generally for spreading storms and pestilence, and as to the monstrous
doctrine of “ excepted cases,”
see the standard
authorities
on witchcraft,
especially W’Lchter, Beitrtige ZUY Gescgchte &J .~trafrpchts, Soldan, Horst. Hauber, and Llngin ; also Burr, as above.
In another series of chapters on TLC Warfk
of HZOTUZ$Y ~ifh Tk&gy,
I hope
For the magic spreading of the plague at
to go more fully into the subject.
Milan, see Manzoni, Z Promessi Sposi and La CO~ZHU Infame ; and for the origin
of the charges, with all the details of the trial, see the Processo On$nak
a’zgZi Untori, Milan, 1839,pnssim,
but especially the large folding plate at the end, exhibiting the tortures.
For the after-history
of the Column of Infamy, and for the
placing of Beccaria’s book on the /n&.x, see Cantu, Vita di Beccaria. For the
magic spreading of the plague in general, see Littre, pp. 492 and following.
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,g
ceding
with Christ to sheathe
his sword and stop, the
plague.
In such an atmosphere
of thought it is no wonder that
the death statistics w&-e appalling.
We hear of districts in
which not more than one in ten escaped, and some were enSuch appeals to fetich against pestilence
tirely depopulated.
have continued in Naples down to our own time, the great
saving power being the liquefaction
of the blood of St. Januarius.
In 1856 the present writer saw this miracle
performed in the gorgeous
chapel of the saint forming part of
The chapel was filled with dethe Cathedral
of Naples.
vout worshippers of every class, from the officials in court
dress, representing
the Bourbon king, down to the lowest
The reliquary
of silver-gilt,
shaped like a large
lazzaroni.
human head, and supposed to contain the skull of the saint,
was first placed upon the altar ; next, two vials containing a
dark substance said to be his blood, having been taken from
the wall, were also placed upon the altar near the head.
As
the priests said masses, they turned the vials from time to
time, and the liquefaction being somewhat delayed, the great
crowd of people burst out into more and more impassioned
expostulation
and petitions to the saint.
Just in front of the
alt,ar were the lazzaroni who claimed to be descendants
of the
saint’s family, and these were especially importunate : at such
they have
times they be,,r they scold, they even threaten;
been known to abuse the saint roundly, and to tell him that,
if he did not care to show his favour to the city by liquefying
his blood, St. Cosmo and St. Damian were just as good saints
as he, and would no doubt be very glad to have the city devote itself to them.
At last, on the occasion above referred
to, the priest, turning the vials suddenly, announced
that
the saint had performed the miracle, and instantly priests,
people, choir, and organ burst forth into a great Te Deum;
bells rang, and cannon roared ; a procession
was formed,
and the shrine containing
the saint’s relics was carried
through the streets, the people prostrating
themselves
on
both sides of the way and throwing showers of rose leaves
upon the shrine and upon the path before it. The contents
of these precious
vials are an interesting
relic indeed, for
they represent
to us vividly that period when men who
80
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were willing
to go to the stake for their religious
opinions thought it not wrong to save the souls of their fellowmen by pious mendacity
and consecrated
fraud.
To the
scientific eye this miracle is very simple: the vials contain,
no doubt, one of those mixtures fusing at low temperature,
which, while kept in its place within the cold stone walls of
the church, remains solid, but upon being brought out into
the hot, crowded chapel, and fondled by the warm hands of
the priests, gradually
softens and becomes
liquid.
It was
curious to note, at the time above mentioned, that even the
high functionaries
representing
the king looked at the miracle with awe : they evidently found “ joy in believing,” and
one of them assured the present writer that the only thing
which could cause it was the direct exercise of miraculous
power.
It may be reassuring to persons contemplating
a visit to
that beautiful capital in these days, that, while this miracle
still goes on, it is no longer the only thing relied upon to
preserve the public health.
An unbelieving
generation, especially taught by the recent horrors of the cholera, has thought
it wise to supplement the power of St. Januarius by the “ Risanamento,” begun mainly in 1885 and still going on. The
drainage of the city has thus been greatly improved, the old
wells closed, and pure water introduced from the mountains.
Moreover, at the last outburst of cholera a few years since,
a noble deed was done which by its moral effect exercised
Upon hearing of this terrific
a widespread healing power.
outbreak of pestilence,
King Humbert,
though under the
ban of the Church, broke from all the entreaties
of his
friends and family, went directly into the plaguestricken
city, and there, in the streets, public places, and hospitals,
encouraged
the living, comforted
the sick and dying, and
took means to prevent a further spread of the pestilence.
To the credit of the Church it should also be said that the
Cardinal Archbishop
San Felice joined him in this.
Miracle for miracle, the effect of this visit of the king
seems to have surpassed anything that St. Januarius could
do, for it gave confidence
and courage
which very soon
showed their effects in diminishing
the number of deaths.
It would certainly appear that in this matter the king was
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81
more directly under Divine inspiration
and guidance
than
was the Pope; for the fact that King Humbert went to Naples at the risk of his life, while Leo XIII remained in safety
at the Vatican, impressed the Italian people in favour of the
new r&ime and against the old as nothing else could have
done.
In other parts of Italy the same progress is seen under
Venice, Genoa, Leghorn, and
the new Italian government.
especially
Rome, which under the sway of the popes was
scandalously
filthy, are now among the cleanest cities in EuWhat the relics of St. Januarius,
St. Anthony, and a
rope.
multitude of local fetiches throughout
Italy were for ages
utterly unable to do, has been accomplished
by the development of the simplest sanitary principles.
Spain shows much the same characteristics
of a country
where theological considerations
have been all-controlling
for
Down to the interference
of Napoleon with that
centuries.
kingdom, all sanitary efforts were looked upon as absurd if not
impious.
The most sober accounts of travellers in the Spanish Peninsula until a recent period are sometimes irresistibly
comic in their pictures of peoples insisting on maintaining
arrangements
more filthy than any which would be permitted in an American backwoods camp, while taking enormous
pains to stop pestilence
by bell-ringings,
processions,
and
new dresses bestowed upon the local Madonnas;
yet here,
The
too, a healthful scepticism
has begun to work for good.
outbreaks
of cholera in recent years have done some little
to bring in better sanitary measures.*
’
1
* As to recourse to fetichism in Italy in time of playe, and the pictures showing the intercession of Januarius
and other saints, I have relied on my own notes
made at various visits to Naples.
For the general subject, see Peter, ~tua’es NapoZitaines, especially chapters v and vi. For detailed accounts of the liquefaction
of St. Januarius’s
blood by eye-witnesses,
one an eminent Catholic of the seventeenth century, and the other a distinguished
Protestant of our own time, see Murray’s Handbook for South Italy and Nap&
description of the Cathedral of San
Gennaro.
For an interesting
series of articles on the subject, see The Cat,&&
IVorZd for September,
October, and November,
1871. For the incredible filthiness of the great cities of Spain, and the resistance
of the people, down to a recent
period, to the most ordinary regulations
prompted
by decency, see Bascome, History of Epidemic Pestilences, especially pp. 119, 120.
See also the Autoobio,rrraphy
of D’Ewes? London, 1845, vol. ii, p. 446; also, for various citations, the second
volume of Buckle, 11istory of CiviZization in England.
34
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OF THEOLOGICAL
VIEWS
REGARDIXG
SANITATION.
We have seen how powerful in various nations especially
obedient to theology were the forces working in opposition
to the evolution of hygiene, and we shall find this same opposition, less effective, it is true, but still acting with great
power, in countries
which had become somewhat
emancipated from theological
control.
In England,
during the
mediaeval period, persecutions
of Jews were occasionally
resorted to, and here and there we hear of persecutions
of
witches;
but, as torture was rarely used in England, there
were, from those charged with producing plague, few of those
torture-born
confessions which in other countries gave rise
to widespread cruelties.
Down to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the filthiness in the ordinary mode of life in
England was such as we can now hardly conceive : fermenting organic material was allowed to accumulate
and become
a part of the earthen floors of rural dwellings;
and this undoubtedly
developed
the germs of many diseases.
In his
noted letter to the physician
of Cardinal Wolsey, Erasmus
describes the filth thus incorporated
into the floors of English houses, and, what is of far more importance,
he shows
an inkling of the true cause of the wasting diseases of the
period.
He says, “ If I entered into a chamber which had
been uninhabited for months, I was immediately
seized with
He ascribed
the fearful plague of the sweating
a fever.”
sickness to this cause.
So, too, the noted Dr. Caius advised
sanitary precautions
against the plague, and in after-generations, Mead, Pringle, and others urged them; but the prevailing thought was too strong, and little was done.
Even
the floor of the presence
chamber
of Queen Elizabeth
in
Greenwich
Palace was “ covered with hay, after the English
fashion,” as one of the chroniclers
tells us.
In the seventeenth
century, aid in these great scourges
was mainly sought in special church services.
The foremost
English churchmen
during that century being greatly given
to study of the early fathers of the Church;
the theological
theory of disease, so dear to the fathers, still held sway, and
GRADUAL
DECAY
OF THEOLOGICAL
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83
this was the case when the various visitations reached their
climax in the great plague of London in 1665, which swept
off more than a hundred thousand people from that city.
The attempts at meeting it by sanitary measures were few
and poor; the medical system of the time was still largely
tinctured by superstitions
resulting from mediaeval modes of
thought;
hence that plague was generally attributed to the
Divine wrath caused by “the prophaning
of the Sabbath.”
Texts from Numbers, the Psalms, Zechariah, and the Apocalypse were dwelt upon in the pulpits to show that plagues
are sent by the Almighty
to punish sin; and perhaps the
most ghastly figure among all those fearful scenes described
by De Foe is that of the naked fanatic walking up and down
the streets with a pan of fiery coals upon his head, and, after
the manner of Jonah at Nineveh, proclaiming
woe to the
city, and its destruction
in forty days.
That sin caused this plague is certain, but it was sanitary
sin. Both before and after this culmination of the disease
cases of plague were constantly occurring in London throughout the seventeenth century ; but about the beginning of the
eighteenth
century it began to disappear.
The great fire
had done a good work by sweeping off many causes and
centres of infection, and there had come wider streets, better
pavements,
and improved water supply ; so that, with the
disappearance of the plague, other diseases, especially dysenteries, which had formerly raged in the city, became much
less frequent.
But, while these epidemics were thus checked in London,
others developed by sanitary ignorance raged fearfully both
there and elsewhere, and of these perhaps the most fearful
The prisons of that period were vile bewas the jail fever.
yond belief.
Men were confined in dungeons rarely if ever
disinfected after the death of previous
occupants,
and on
corridors connecting
directly with the foulest sewers : there
was no proper disinfection,
ventilation, or drainage;
hence
in most of the large prisons for criminals or debtors the jail
fever was supreme, and from these centres
it frequently
spread through the adjacent towns.
This was especially the
In the
case during the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries.
Black Assize at Oxford, in 1577, the chief baron, the sheriff,
FROM
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and about three hundred men died within forty hours.
Lord
Bacon declared the jail fever “ the most pernicious infection
next to the plague.”
In 1730, at the Dorsetshire
Assize, the
chief baron and many lawyers were killed by it. The High
Sheriff of Somerset also took the disease and died. A single
Scotch regiment, being infected from some prisoners, lost no
less than two hundred.
In 1750 the disease was so virulent
at Newgate,.in
the heart of. London, that two judges, the
lord mayor, sundry aldermen, and many others, died of it.
It is worth noting that, while efforts at sanitary dealing
with this state of things were few, the theological
spirit
developed a new and special form of prayer for the sufferers
and placed it in the Irish Prayer Book.
These forms of prayer seem to have been the main reliance through the first half of the eighteenth
century.
But
about 1750 began the work of John Howard, who visited
the prisons of England, made known their condition to the
world, and never rested until they were greatly improved.
Then he applied the same benevolent
activity to prisons in
other countries, in the far East, and in southern Europe, and
finally laid down his life, a victim to disease contracted
on
one of hi’s missions of mercy;
but the hygienic
reforms he
began were developed more and more until this fearful blot
upon modern civilization
was removed.*
* For Erasmus, see the letter cited in Bascome, Hishy of EpidemicPeh’Ztmm,
London, 1851. For account of the condition of Queen Elizabeth’s presence chamber, see the same, p. 206 ; see also the same for attempts at sanitation by Caius,
Mead, Pringle, and others ; and see Baas and various medical authorities.
For the
plague in London, see Green’s Hidaly of tke EngZish PeopZe, chap. ix, sec. 2 ; and
for a more detailed account, see Lingard, History ofBngZuna’,
enlarged edition of
1S49, vol. ix, pp. 107 et $69. For full scientific discussion of this and other plagues
from a medical point of view, see Creighton, History of Epidemics in Great Britain,
vol. ii, chap. i. For the London plague as a punishment
for Sabbath-breaking,
see
A Divine
Tragedie
God’s judgements
hate& acted, OYA
upon Sabbatk Breakers
coZZection of
sun&e
memorabr’e examples of
and other Zike Zibeertines, etc., by that worthy
divine, Mr. Henry Burton, 1641. The book gives fifty-six accounts
of Sabbathbreakers sorely punished, generally struck dead, in England, with places, names,
For a general account of the condition of London in the sixteenth and
and dates.
seventeenth centuries, and the diminution
of the plague by the rebuilding
of some
parts of the city after the great fire, see Lecky, History of Bnghnd
in the Eighteenth Century,
vol. i, pp. 592, 593. For the Jail fever, see Lecky, vol. i, pp.
500-503.
GRADUAL
‘*
/
DECAY
OF THEOLOGICAL
VIEWS.
85
The same thing was seen in the Protestant
colonies of
America;
but here, while plagues were steadily attributed
to Divine wrath or Satanic malice, there was one case in
which it was claimed that such a visitation was due to the
Divine mercy.
The pestilence among the Idians, before the
arrival of the Plymouth
Colony, was attributed in a notable
work of that period to the Divine purpose of clearing New
England for the heralds of the gospel ; on the other hand,
the plagues which destroyed
the wkite population were attributed by the same authority to devils and witches.
In
Cotton Mather’s Wona’rrs of the ImusibZe World, published at
Boston in 1693, we have striking
examples of this.
The
great Puritan divine tells us:
“ Plagues are some of those woes, with which the Divil
troubles us. It is said of the Israelites,
in I Cor. IO. IO.
T/zey were destroyect of the destroyer.
That is, they had the
‘Tis the Destroyer,
or the Divil, that
Plague among them.
scatters
Plagues about the World:
Pestilential
and Contagious Diseases, ‘tis the Divel, who do’s oftentimes Invade
‘Tis no uneasy thing, for the Divel, to imus with them.
pregnate the Air about us, with such Malignant
Salts, as
meeting with the Salt of our Microcosm,
shall immediately
cast us into that Fermentation
and Putrefaction,
which will
utterly dissolve All the Vital Tyes within us; Ev’n as an
Aqua Fortis, made with a conjunction
of Nitre and Vitriol,
Corrodes what it Siezes upon.
And when the Dive1 has
raised those Arsenical
Fumes, which become Venomous
Quivers full of Terrible
Arrows, how easily can he shoot
the deleterious
Miasms into those Juices or Bowels of hIen’s
Bodies, which will soon Enflame
them with a Mortal Fire!
Hence come such Plagues,
as that Beesome
of Destruction
which within our memory
swept away such a throng
of people from one English
City in one Visitation
: and hence those
Infectious
Feavers,
which are but so many Disguised
Plagues
among us, Causing
Epidemical
Desolations.”
Mather
gives several
instances
of witches
causing
diseases, and speaks of ‘( some long Bow’d down under such a
Spirit of Infirmity
” being
“ hjarvelously
Recovered
upon
the Death of the Witches,”
of which he gives an instance.
He also cites a case where
a patient
“ was brought
unto
86
FROM
FETICH
TO
HYGIEKE.
death’s door and so remained until the witch was taken and
carried away by the constable, when he began at once to
recover and was soon well.” *
In France we see, during generation
after generation,
a
similar history evolved ; pestilence
after pestilence
came,
and was met by various fetiches.
Noteworthy
is the plague
at Marseilles
near the beginning
of the last century.
The
chronicles
of its sway are ghastly.
They speak of great
heaps of the unburied dead in the public places, “forming
pestilential
volcanoes ” ; of plague-stricken
men and women
in delirium wandering naked through the streets ; of churches
and shrines thronged with great crowds shrieking for mercy ;
of other crowds flinging themselves
into the wildest
debauchery ; of robber bands assassinating
the dying and plundering the dead ; of three thousand neglected
children collected in one hospital and then left to die ; and of the deathroll numbering at last fifty thousand out of a population
of
less than ninety thousand.
In the midst of these fearful scenes stood a body of men
and women worthy to be held in eternal honour-the
physicians from Paris and Montpellier
; the mayor of the city,
and one or two of his associates;
but, above all, the Chevalier Roze and Bishop Belzunce.
The history of these men
may well make us glory in human nature ; but in all this
noble group the figure of Belzunce
is the most striking.
Nobly and firmly, when so many others even among the
regular and secular ecclesiastics
fled, he stood by his flock:
day and night he was at work in the hospitals, cheering
the
living, comforting
the dying, and doing what was possible
for the decent disposal of the dead.
In him were united the
two great antagonistic
currents of religion and of theology.
As a theologian
he organized
processions
and expiatory
services, which, it must be confessed, rather increased
the
* For the passages from Cotton Mather, see his book as cited, pp. 17. 18, also
134, 145. Johnson
declares
that “by this meanes Christ . . . not only made
roome for His people to plant, but also tamed the hard and cruel1 hearts of these
barbarous Indians, insomuch that halfe a handful of His people landing not long
after in Plymouth
Plantation,
found little resistance.”
See the History of h’ew
En&wzd, by Edward Johnson,
London,
1654. Reprinted
in the il~ussacllusetf~
Historical Society’s CoZLection, second series, vol. i, p. 67.
GRADUAL
DECAY
OF THEOLOGICAL
VIEWS.
87
disease than diminished it ; moreover, he accepted that wild
dream of a hysterical
nun-the
worship
of the material,
physical sacred heart of Jesus-and
was one of the first to
consecrate
his diocese to it ; but, on the other hand, the religious spirit gave in him one of its most beautiful manifestations in that or any other century ; justly have the people of
Marseilles placed his statue in the midst of their city in an
attitude of prayer and blessing.
In every part of Europe and America, down to a recent
period, we find pestilences
resulting
from carelessness
or
providences.”
As late
superstition
still called “ inscrutable
as the end of the eighteenth
century, when great epidemics
made fearful havoc in Austria, the main means against them
seem to have been grovellin g before the image of St. Sebastian and calling in special “ witch-doctors
“-that
is, monks
who cast out devils.
To seek the aid of physicians was, in
the neighbourhood
of these monastic centres, very generally
considered
impious, and the enormous death rate in such
neighbourhoods
was only diminished in the present century,
when scientific hygiene began to make its way.
The old view of pestilence had also its full course in Calvinistic Scotland;
the only difference
being that, while in
Roman Catholic
countries
relief was sought by fetiches,
gifts, processions,
exorcisms, burnings of witches, and other
works of expiation, promoted
by priests;
in Scotland, after
the Reformation,
it was sought in fast-days and executions
of witches promoted by Protestant
elders.
Accounts
of the
filthiness of Scotch cities and villages, down to a period well
within this century,
seem monstrous.
All that in these
days is swept into the sewers was in those allowed to rem&n
around the houses or thrown into the streets.
The old theological theory, that “ vain is the help of man,” checked scientific thought and paralyzed
sanitary endeavour.
The result was natural:
between the thirteenth
and seventeenth
centuries thirty notable epidemics
swept the country,
and
some of them carried off multitudes;
but as a rule these
never suggested
sanitary itnprovement
; they were called
“ visitations,” attributed to Divine wrath against human sin,
and the work of the authorities
was to announce the particular sin concerned and to declaim against it. Amazing the-
FROM
88
FETICH
TO
HYGIENE.
ories were thus propounded-theories
which led to spasms
of severity;
and, in some of these, offences generally punished much less severely were visited with death.
Every
pulpit interpreted
the ways of God to man in such seasons
so as rather to increase than to diminish the pestilence.
The
effect of thus seeking supernatural causes rather than natural
may be seen in such facts as the death by plague of one
fourth of the whole population of the city of Perth in a single year of the fifteenth century, other towns suffering similarly both then and afterward.
Here and there, physicians
more wisely inspired endeavoured to push sanitary measures, and in 1585 attempts were
made to clean the streets of Edinburgh;
but the chroniclers
tell us that “ the magistrates
and ministers gave no heed.”
One sort of calamity, indeed, came in as a mercy-the
great
fires which swept through the cities, clearing and cleaning
them.
Though the town council of Edinburgh
declared the
noted fire of 1700 “a fearful rebuke of God,” it was observed
that, after it had done its work, disease and death were
greatly diminished.*
III.
THE
TRIUMPH
OF
SANITARY
SCIENCE.
But by those standing in the higher places of thought
some glimpses of scientific truth had already been obtained,
and attempts at compromise
between theology and science
in this field began to be made, not only by ecclesiastics,
but
first of all, as far back as the seventeenth
century, by a man
of science eminent both for attainments and character-Robert Boyle.
Inspired by the discoveries
in other fields, which
had swept away so much of theological
thought, he could no
* For the plague at Marseilles and its depopulation,
see Henri Martin, Nistoire
de France, vol. xv, especially document
cited in appendix ; also Gibbon, DecGne
For the resort to witch-doctors
in Austria
and F&Z, chap. xliii ; also Rambaud.
against
pestilence,
down
to the
UeutschZaand z’m Arhtzehnten
end of the
Jahrhundert.
eighteenth
century, see Biedermann,
For the resort to St. Sebastian, see the
widespread
editions of the Vita et Gesta San& Sebastiani,
prefaced with commendations
from bishops and other high
contra pestem patroni,
ecclesiastics.
The edi-
tion in the Cornell
University
1693.
filth and pestilence
in Scotland,
Edinburgh,
Library
is that of Augsburg,
For the reign of
see Charles Rogers, D. D., Social Life in Scotland.
1684,vol. i, pp. 305-316, . see also Buckle’s second volume.
f --1
THE
TRIUMPH
OF
SANITARY
SCIENCE.
89
longer resist the conviction that some epidemics are due-in
his own words-“
to a tragical concourse of natural causes ” ;
but he argued that some of these may be the result of Divine
interpositions
provoked by human sins.
As time went on,
great difficulties showed themselves in the way of this compromise-difficulties
theological
not less than difficulties scientific.
To a Catholic it was more and more hard to explain
the theological
grounds why so many orthodox cities, firm
in the faith, were punished, and so many heretical
cities
spared ; and why, in regions devoted to the Church,
the
poorer people, whose faith in theological
fetiches was unquestioning, died in times of pestilence like flies, while scepDifficulties of the same sort betics so frequently escaped.
set devoted Protestants;
they, too, might well ask why it
was that the devout peasantry in their humble cottages perished, while so much larger a proportion of the more sceptical upper classes were untouched.
Gradually
it dawned
both upon Catholic and Protestant
countries that, if any sin
be punished by pestilence,
it is the sin of filthiness;
more
and more it began to be seen by thinking men of both religions that Wesley’s great dictum stated even less than the
truth; that not only was “ cleanliness akin to godliness,” but
that, as a means of keeping off pestilence, it was far superior
to godliness as godliness was then generally understood.*
The recent history of sanitation in all civilized countries
shows triumphs which might well fill us with wonder, did
there not rise within LIS a far greater wonder that they were
so long delayed.
Amazing is it to see how near the world
has come again and again to discovering
the key to the cause
and cure of pestilence.
It is now a matter of the simplest
elementary knowledge that some of the worst epidemics are
conveyed in water.
But this fact seems to have been discovered many times in human history.
In the Peloponnesian war the Athenians asserted that their enemies had poisoned their-cisterns;
in the Middle Ages the people generally declared
that the Jews had poisoned their wells; and
as late as the cholera of 1832 the Parisian mob insisted that
the water-carriers
who distributed
water for drinking pur* For Boyle’s attempt at compromise,
see Discourse on fhe Air,
vol. iv, pp. 258, 289, cited by Buckle, vol. i, pp. 128, 129, note.
in his works,
’
*
90
.
FROM
FETICH
TO
HYGIENE.
poses from the Seine, polluted as it was by sewage, had pois.
oned it, and in some cases murdered them on this charge :
so far did this feeling go that locked covers were sometimes
placed upon the water-buckets.
Had not such men as Roger
Bacon and his long line of successors been thwarted by theological authority,-had
not such men as Thomas Aquinas,
Vincent of Beauvais, and Albert the Great been drawn or
driven from the paths of science
into the dark, tortuous
paths of theology, leading no whither,-the
world to-day, at
the end of the nineteenth century, would have arrived at the
solution of great problems and the enjoyment of great results
which will only be reached at the end of the twentieth ten_
tury, and even in generations
more remote.
Diseases like
typhoid fever, influenza and pulmonary consumption,
scarlet
fever, diphtheria, pneumonia, and Zagyz&e, which now carry
off so many most precious
lives, would have long since
ceased to scourge the world.
Still, there is one cause for satisfaction : the law governing the relation of theology
to disease is now well before
the world, and it is seen in the fact that, just in proportion as
the world progressed
from the sway of Hippocrates
to that
of the ages of faith, so it progressed
in the frequency and
severity of great pestilences ; and that, on the other hand,
just in proportion as the world has receded from that period
when theology was all-pervading
and all-controlling,
plague
after plague has disappeared, and those remaining
have become less and less frequent and virulent.++
The recent history of hygiene in all countries shows a
and these may well be studied in
long series of victories,
Great Britain and the United States.
In the former, though
there had been many warnings from eminent physicians,
and above all in the seventeenth
and eighteenth
centuries,
from men like Caius, Mead, and Pringle, the result was far
short of what might have been gained ; and it was only in
the year 1838 that a systematic
sanitary effort was begun in
* For the charge of poisoning water and producing pestilence among the Greeks,
see Grote, History of Greece, vol. vi, p. 213. For a similar charge against the Jews
in the Middle Ages, see various histories already cited ; and for the great popular
prejudice against water-carriers
at Paris in recent times, see the larger recent French
histories.
THE
r
TRIUMPH
OF SANITARY
SCIENCE.
9’
England by the public authorities.
The state of things at
that time, though by comparison
with the Middle Ages
happy, was, by comparison with what has since been gained,
fearful : the death rate among all classes was high, but among
Out of seventy-seven
thousand
the poor it was ghastly.
paupers in London during the years 1837 and 1838, fourteen
thousand were suffering from fever, and of these nearly six
In many other parts of the British
thousand from typhus.
A noble body
Islands the sanitary condition was no better.
of men grappled with the problem, and in a few years one of
The
these rose above his fellows-the
late Edwin Chadwick.
opposition to his work was bitter, and, though many churchmen aided him, the support given by theologians
and ecclesiastics as a whole was very far short of what it should have
been.
Too many of them were occupied in that most costly
and most worthless of all processes, “ the saving of souls ” by
Yet some of the higher ecclesiasthe inculcation of dogma.
tics and many of the lesser clergy did much, sometimes risking their lives, and one of them, Sidney Godolphin Osborne,
deserves lasting memory for his struggle to make known the
sanitary wants of the peasantry.
Chadwick began to be widely known in 1848 as a member of the Board of Health, and was driven out for a time
for over-zeal; but from one point or another, during forty
developed
the new work,
years, he fought the opposition,
and one of the best exhibits of its results is shown in his address before the Sanitary
Conference
at Brighton
in 1888.
From this and other perfectly trustworthy
sources some idea
may be gained of the triumph of the scientific over the theological method of dealing with disease, whether epidemic or
sporadic.
In the latter half of the seventeenth
century the annual
mortality of London is estimated at not less than eighty in a
thousand ; about the middle of this century it stood at twenty-four in a thousand ; in 1889 it stood at less than eighteen
in a thousand ; and in many parts the most recent statistics
show that it has been brought down to fourteen or fifteen in
a thousand.
A quarter of a century ago the death rate from
disease in the Royal Guards at London was twenty in a
thousand ; in 1888 it had been reduced to sis in a thousand.
92
FROM
FETICH
TO HYGIENE.
In the army generally
it had been seventeen
in a thousand,
but it has been reduced
until it now stands at eight.
In the
old Indian army it had been sixty-nine
in a thousand,
but of
late it has been brought
down first to twenty,
and finally to
fourteen.
Mr. Chadwick
in his speech
proved
that much
more might be done, for he called attention
to the German
army, where the death rate from disease
has been reduced
to between
five and six in a thousand.
The Public
Health
Act having
been passed in 1875, the death rate in England
among
men fell, between
1871 and 1880, more than four in a
thousand,
and among women
more than six in a thousand.
In the decade
between
1851 and 1860 there
died of diseases
attributable
to defective
drainage
and impure
water
over
four thousand
persons
in every million throughout
England
:
these numbers
have declined
until in 1888 there died less
than two thousand
in every million.
The most striking
diminution of the deaths from such causes was found in 1891, in
the case of typhoid
fever, that diminution
being
fifty per
cent.
As to the scourge
which,
next to plagues
like the
Black Death,
was formerly
the most dreaded-smallpoxthere died of it in London
during
the year 1890 just one person.
Drainage
in Bristol
reduced
the death rate by consumption
from 4.4 to 2.3; at Cardiff, from 3.47 to 2.31 ; and
in all England
and Wales, from 2.68 in 1851 to 1.55 in 1888.
What
can be accomplished
by better
sanitation
is also
seen to-day by a comparison
between
the death rate among
the children
outside
and inside
the charity
schools.
The
death rate among those outside in 1881 was twelve in a thousand;
while inside, where the children
were under
sanitary
regulations
maintained
by competent
authorities,
it has been
brought
down first to eight, then to four, and finally to less
than three in a thousand.
In view df statistics
like these, it becomes
clear
that
Edwin
Chadwick
and his compeers
among
the sanitary
authorities
have in half a century
done far more to reduce
the rate of disease and death than has been done in fifteen
hundred
years by all the fetiches which theological
reasoning could devise or ecclesiastical
power enforce.
Not less striking
has been the history
of hygiene
in
France:
thanks
to the decline
of theological
control
over
THE
RELATION
OF SANITARY
SCIENCE
TO RELIGION.
93
the universities,
to the abolition of monasteries,
and to such
labours in hygienic
research and improvement
as those of
Tardieu,
Levy, and Bouchardat,
a wondrous
change has
been wrought
in public health.
Statistics
carefully
kept
show that the mean length of human life has been remarkIn the eighteenth century it was but twentyably increased.
three years; from 1825 to 1830 it was thirty-two
years and
years and six
eight months ; and since 1864, thirty-seven
months.
IV. THE
i
RELATION
OF SANITARY
SCIENCE
TO RELIGION.
The
question may now arise whether
this progress in
sanitary science has been purchased
at any real sacrifice of
One piece of recent history inreligion in its highest sense.
dicates an answer to this question.
The Second Empire in
France had its head in Napoleon III, a noted Voltairean.
At
the climax of his power he determined to erect an Academy
of Music which should be the noblest building of its kind.
It was projected
on a scale never before known, at least in
modern times, and carried on for years, millions being lavished
upon it. At the same time the emperor determined
to rebuild the HBtel-Dieu,
the great Paris hospital;
this, too, was
projected on a greater scale than anything of the kind ever
before known, and also required millions.
But in the erection
of these two buildings the emperor’s determination
was distinctly made known, that with the highest provision for aesthetic enjoyment there should be a similar provision, moving
on parallel lines, for the relief of human suffering.
This
plan was carried out to the letter:
the Palace of the Opera
and the H&el-Dieu
went on with equal steps, and the former
was not allowed to be finished before the latter.
Among all
the “ most Christian
kings ” of the house of Bourbon who
had preceded him for five hundred years, history shows no
such obedience to the religious and moral sense of the nation.
Catharine de’ Medici and her sons, plunging the nation into
the great wars of religion, never showed any such feeling;
Louis XIV, revoking
the Edict of Nantes for the glory of
God, and bringing
the nation to sorrow during many generations, never dreamed of making the construction
of his
94
FROM
FETICH
TO HYGIENE.
palaces and public buildings
wait upon the demands
of
charity;
Louis XV, so subservient
to the Church in all
things, never betrayed the slightest consciousness
that, while
making enormous expenditures
to gratify his own and the
national vanity, he ought to carry on works,paripassu,
for
Nor did the French nation, at those periods when
charity.
it was most largely under the control of theological
considerations, seem to have any inkling of the idea that nation or
monarch should make provision for relief from human suffering, to justify provision for the sumptuous enjoyment
of
art : it was reserved
for the second half of the nineteenth
century to develop this feeling so strongly, though quietly,
that Napoleon
III, notoriously
an unbeliever
in all orthodoxy, was obliged to recognise
it and to set this great example.
Nor has the recent history of the United States been less
fruitful in lessons.
Yellow fever, which formerly swept not
only Southern cities but even New York and Philadelphia,
has now been almost entirely warded off. Such epidemics
as that in Memphis a few years since, and the immunity of
the city from such visitations
since its sanitary condition
was changed by Mr. Waring, are a most striking object lesCholera, which again and again
son to the whole country.
swept the country, has ceased to be feared by the public at
large.
Typhus fever, once so deadly, is now rarely heard
of. Curious is it to find that some of the diseases which in
the olden time swept off myriads on myriads in every country, now cause fewer deaths than some diseases thought
of little account, and for the cure of which people therefore rely, to their cost, on quackery
instead of medical
science.
This development
of sanitary science and hygiene in the
United States has also been coincident with a marked change
in the attitude of the American pulpit as regards the theory
In this country, as in others, down to a period
of disease.
within living memory, deaths due to want of sanitary precautions were constantly dwelt upon in funeral sermons as
“ results of national sin,” or as “ inscrutable
Providences.”
That view has mainly passed away among the clergy of the
more enlightened
parts of the country,
and we now find
THE
RELATION
OF
SANITARY
SCIENCE
TO RELIGION.
95
them, as a rule, active in spreading
useful ideas as to the
The religious press has been especially
prevention of disease.
faithful in this respect, carrying
to every household
more
just ideas of sanitary precautions
and hygienic living.
The attitude
even of many among the most orthodox
rulers in church and state has been changed by facts like
Lord Palmerston
refusing the request of the Scotch
these.
clergy that a fast day be appointed to ward off cholera, and
advising them to go home and clean their streets,-the
devout
Emperor William II forbidding
prayer-meetings
in a similar
emergency,
on the ground that they led to neglect of practical human means of help,-all
this is in striking contrast to
the older methods.
Well worthy of note is the ground taken in 1893, at
Philadelphia,
by an eminent divine of the Protestant
Episcopal Church.
The Bishop of Pennsylvania
having issued a
special call to prayer in order to ward off the cholera, this
clergyman refused to respond to the call, declaring
that to
do so, in the filthy condition
of the streets then prevailing
in Philadelphia,
would be blasphemous.
In summing up the whole subject, we see that in this
field, as in so many others, the triumph of scientific thought
has gradually done much to evolve in the world not only a
theology but also a religious spirit more and more worthy
of the goodness of God and of the destiny of man.*
* On the improvement
in sanitation in London and elsewhere in the north of
Europe, see the editorial and Report of the Conference on Sanitation
at Brig&on,
given in the London Times of August 27, 1888. For the best authorities
on the
general subject in England, see Sir John Simon on BngZislt Sanitary Institutions,
189o ; also his published HeaZth Reports for 1887, cited in the Edinburgh
Reuie-w
for January, 1891. See also Parkes’s Z3ygiene,passim.
For the great increase of
the mean length of life in France under better hygienic conditions, see Rambaud,
La Cidisatioa
cotdemporaine en France, p. 682.
For the approach
to depopulation at Memphis, under the cesspool system in 1878, see Parkes, Ilygieene, American
appendix, p. 397. For the facts brought out in the investigation
of the departments of the city of New York by the Committee
of the State Senate, of which
the present writer was a member, see New York Senate Documents for 1865. For
decrease of death rate in New York city under the new Board of Health, beginning in 1866, and especially
among children,
see Buck, Hygiene and Popular
Hea&
New York, 1879, vol. ii, p. 573 ; and for wise remarks on religious duties
dnring pestilence,
see ibid., vol. ii, p. 579. For a contrast between the old and
new ideas regarding pestilences, see Charles Kingsley in Fraser’s Magazine, vol. Iviii,
FROM
96
FETICH
TO
HYGIENE.
p. 134; also the sermon of Dr. Burns, in 1875, at the Cathedral
of Glasgow before the Social Science Congress.
For a particularly
bright and valuable statement of the triumphs of modern sanitation,
see Mrs. Plunkett’s
article in Tie
p~+Zar Science Mont!+
for June, 1891. For the reply of Lord Palmerston
to
the Scotch clergy, see the well-known
passage in Buckle.
For the order of the
Emperor William, see various newspapers
for September,
1892, and especially
Pub&c Opinion for September 24th.
.
CHAPTER
XV.
I;ROM,"DEMONZACAL
POSSESSZON"
ZNSANZTY.
I. THEOLOGICAL
IDEAS
OF
LUNACY
AND
ITS
TO
TREATMENT.
OF all the triumphs
won by science for humanity, few
have been farther-reaching
in good effects than the modern
treatment of the insane.
But this is the result of a struggle
long and severe between
two great forces.
On one side
have stood the survivals of various superstitions,
the metaphysics of various philosophies,
the dogmatism
of various
theologies, the literal interpretation
of various sacred books,
and especially of our own-all
compacted
into a creed that
insanity is mainly or largely demoniacal
possession ; on the
other side has stood science, gradually accumulating
proofs
that insanity is always the result of physical disease.
I purpose in this chapter to sketch, as briefly as I may,
the history of this warfare, or rather of this evolution of truth
out of error.
Nothing
is more simple and natural, in the early stages
of civilization,
than belief in occult, self-conscious
powers of
evil.
Troubles
and calamities
come upon man ; his ignorance of physical laws forbids him to attribute them to physical causes;
he therefore
attributes
them sometimes to the
wrath of a good being, but more frequently to the malice of
an evil being.
Especially is this the case with diseases.
The real causes
of disease are so intricate
that they are reached only after
ages of scientific
labour;
hence they, above all, have been
attributed to the influence of evil spirits.*
* On the general attribution of disease to demoniacal influence,
I/istory of ~edirine. $a&72
(note, iOr a later
attitude, vol. ii, pp.
35
97
see Sprenger,
150-170,
178)
;
,
98
FROM
“DEMONIACAL
POSSESSION
” TO
INSANITY.
But, if ordinary diseases were likely to be attributed
to
diabolical agency, how much more diseases of the brain, and
especially the more obscure of these ! These, indeed, seemed
to the vast majority of mankind possible only on the theory
of Satanic intervention
: any approach to a true theory of the
connection between physical causes and mental results is one
of the highest acquisitions
of science.
Here and there, during the whole historic period, keen
men had obtained an inkling of the truth ; but to the vast
multitude, down to the end of the seventeenth century, nothing was more clear than that insanity is, in many if not in
most cases, demoniacal possession.
Yet at a very early date, in Greece
and Rome, science
had asserted itself, and a beginning
had been made which
seemed destined to bring a large fruitage of blessings.*
In
the fifth century before the Christian era, Hippocrates
of Cos
asserted the great truth that all madness is simply disease
of the brain, thereby beginning a development
of truth and
mercy which lasted nearly a thousand years.
In the first
century after Christ, Aretmus carried these ideas yet further,
observed
the phenomena
of insanity with great acuteness,
and reached yet more valuable results.
Near the beginning
of the following century, Sol-anus went still further in the
Calmeil, De Za Fdie, Paris, 1845, vol. i, pp. 104,105 ; Esquirol, Des MaZaa’ies fife,i&es, Paris, 1838, vol. i, p. 482 ; also Tyler, Primitive
Cuhwe.
For a very plain
and honest statement
of this view in our own sacred books, see Oort, Hooykaas,
and Kuenen,
Tb.e
Bible for
English translation,
chap. v, p. 167, and
chap. xvii. For this idea in Greece and
elsewhere, see Ma-my, La Magic, etc., vol. iii, p. 276, giving, among other citations,
one from book v of the Odyssey.
On the influence of Platonism,
see Esquirol
and
others, as above-the
main passage cited is from the P&do.
For the devotion of
;
following
also Farrar’s
the early fathers
St. Jerome,
and doctors
St. Augustine,
Young People,
Life of
Christ,
to this idea, see citations
St. John
Chrysostom,
(i. e., Paul
L’lmagination,
p. 369 ; also Jacob
183.
For St. Augustine, see also his De Civitate
Enawatio
in PsaZ., cxxxv, I. For the breaking
from Eusebius,
Lactantius,
St. Gregory Nazianzen, in Tissot,
Lacroix),
Croyances EoptrIaires,
p.
Dei, lib. xxii, chap. viii, and his
away of the religious orders in
from the entire supremacy of this idea, see BCcavin, L’l&oIe de Salerne, Paris,
Even so late as the Protestant
1868 ; also Daremberg,
Histoiw
de Za fif/a’ecine.
Reformation,
Martin Luther maintained
(Tad& TaZk, Hazlitt’s
translation,
London, 1872, pp. 250-256)
that “ Satan produces all the maladies which afflict man-
Italy
kind.”
* It is significant
means,
literally,
of this scientific
attitude
fear of gods or demons.
that the Greek
word for superstition
THEOLOGICAL
IDEAS
OF LUNACY
AND
ITS
TREATMENT.
gg
same path, giving new results of research, and strengthening
scientific truth.
Toward the end of the same century a new
epoch was ushered in by Galen, under whom the same truth
was developed
yet further, and the path toward merciful
In the third
treatment
of the insane made yet more clear.
century Celius Aurelianus
received
this deposit of precious
truth, elaborated it, and brought forth the great idea which,
had theology, citing biblical texts, not banished it, would
have saved fifteen centuries
of cruelty-an
idea not fully
recognised
again till near the beginning of the present century-the
idea that insanity is brain disease, and that the
In the sixth centreatment
of it must be gentle and kind.
tury Alexander
of Tralles
presented
still more fruitful researches, and taught the world how to deal with 7neZancLoZia;
and, finally, in the seventh century, this great line of scientific men, working mainly under pagan auspices, was closed
who under the protection
of Caliph
by Paul of Bgina,
Omar made still further observations,
but, above all, laid
stress on the cure of madness as a disease, and on the absolute necessity of mild treatment.
Such was this great succession in the apostolate of science :
evidently no other has ever shown itself more directly under
Divine grace, illumination,
and guidance.
It had given to
the world what might have been one of its greatest blessings.*
This evolution of divine truth was interrupted
by theology.
There set into the early Church a current of belief
which was destined to bring all these noble acquisitions
of
science and religion to naught, and, during centuries, to inflict tortures, physical and mental, upon hundreds of thousands of innocent
men and women-a
belief which held its
cruel sway for nearly eighteen
centuries;
and this belief
was that madness was mainly or largely possession by the
devil.
* For authorities regarding this development of scientific truth and mercy in
antiquity, see especially Krafft-Ebing, Le&bur~ a’er Psychiatric, Stuttgart, 1888,
p. 40 and the pages following ; T&at, Recherchs Historipes SW In Folie, Paris,
1839 ; Semelaigne, L’Aliehtion
mentde dam I’dntiquitb, Paris, 1869 ; Dagron,
Des AZiknPs, Paris, 1875 ; al50 Calmeil, De Za F&e, Sprenger,
and especially Isensee, Geschirhfe deu Me&in, Berlin, 1840.
IO0
FROM
“DEMONIACAL
POSSESSION
” TO
INSANITY.
This idea of diabolic agency in mental disease had grown
luxuriantly in all the Oriental sacred literatures.
In the series of Assyrian. mythological
tablets in which we find those
legends of the Creation, the Fall, the Flood, and other early
conceptions
from which the Hebrews
so largely drew the
accounts wrought into the book of Genesis, have been discovered the formulas for driving out the evil spirits which
cause disease.
In the Persian theology regarding the struggle of the great powers of good and evil this idea was developed to its. highest point.
From these and other ancient
sources the Jews naturally received this addition to their earlier view : the Mocker of the Garden of Eden became Satan,
with legions of evil angels at his command ; and the theory
of diabolic causes of mental disease took a firm place in our
sacred books.
Such cases in the Old Testament
as the evil
spirit in Saul, which we now see to have been simply melancholy-and,
in the New Testament,
the various accounts of
the casting out of devils, through which is refracted
the
beautiful and simple story of that power by which Jesus of
Nazareth soothed perturbed minds by his presence or quelled
outbursts of madness by his words, give examples of this. In
Greece, too, an idea akin to this found lodgment both in the
popular belief and in the philosophy of Plato and Socrates;
and
though, as we have seen, the great leaders in medical
science had taught with more or less distinctness
that insanity is the result of physical disease, there was a st.rong
popular tendency to attribute the more troublesome
cases of
it to hostile spiritual influence.*
From all these sources, but especially
from our sacred
* For the exorcism against disease found at Nineveh, see G. Smith, Delitzsch’s
For a very interesting
passage regarding
the represenGerman translation,
p. 34.
tation of a diabolic personage on a Babylonian
bronze, and for a very frank statement regarding the transmission
of ideas regarding
Satanic power to our sacred
It is, indeed, extremely
doubtbooks, see Sayce, Herodotus, appendix
ii, p. 393.
ful whether
Plato himself
or his contemporaries
knew
anything
of eviZ demons,
conception probably coming into the Greek world, as into the Latin, with
ental influences that began to prevail about the time of the birth of Christ
this
the Ori; but to
the early Christians a demon was a demon, and Plato’s, good or had, were pagan,
The Greek word “ epilepsy ” is itself a survival of the old beand therefore devils.
lief, fossilized
by evil spirits.
in a word, since its literal
meaning
refers
to the seizure of the patient
THEOLOGICAL
IDEAS
OF
LUNACY
AND
ITS
TREATMENT.
IoI
books and the writings of Plato, this theory that mental disease is caused largely or mainly by Satanic influence passed
In the apostolic times no belief
on into the early Church.
seems to have been more firmly settled.
The early fathers
and doctors in the following age universally accepted it, and
the apologists generally spoke of the power of casting out
devils as a leading proof of the divine origin of the Christian
religion.
This belief took firm hold upon the strongest
men.
The
case of St. Gregory
the Great is typical.
He was a pope of
exceedingly
broad mind for his time, and no one will think
him unjustly reckoned one of the four Doctors of the Western Church.
Yet he solemnly relates that a nun, having
eaten some lettuce without making the sign of the cross,
swallowed a devil, and that, when commanded
by a holy
man to come forth, the devil replied : “ How am I to blame?
I was sitting on the lettuce, and this woman, not having
made the sign of the cross, ate me along with it.” *
As a result of this idea, the Christian Church at an early
period in its existence virtually gave up the noble conquests
of Greek and Roman science in this field, and originated, for
persons supposed to be possessed, a regular discipline, developed out of dogmatic
theology.
But during the centuries before theology
and ecclesiasticism
had become fully
dominant this discipline
was, as a rule, gentle and useful.
* For
Josephus,
a striking
statement
of the Jewish
belief in diabolical interference,
see
De BeZZo~udaica,
vii, 6, iii ; also his Antiquities,
vol. viii, Whiston’s
On the “devil cast out,” in Mark ix, 17-29, as undoubtedly
a case of
translation.
epilepsy, see Cherullier, Essai SW I’J&‘Ztp.rie ; also Maury, art. De’moniague in the
EncycZopopPdie
Moa’eme. In one text, at least, the popular belief is perfectly shown
as confounding
madness and possession:
“ He bath a devil, and is mad,” John x,
20. Among the multitude of texts, those most relied upon were Matthew viii, 28,
x, 17 ; and for the use of fetiches in driving out evil spirits, the account
of the cures wrought by touching the garments of St. Paul in Acts xix, 12. On the
and Luke
general
+
i
subject,
see authorities
already
given,
and as a typical
passage
Tertullian.
Au’. .%a_~+.,ii. For the very gross view taken by St. Basil, see Cudworth, InteZlectuaZ
System, vol. ii, p. 648 ; also Archdeacon
Farrar’s
Life of Christ.
For the case
related by St. Gregory the Great with comical details, see the Elcpmpla of Archbishop Jacques
de Vitry,
edited by Prof. T. F. Crane,
of Cornell
University,
art. cxxx.
For a curious presentation
of Greek views, see L&t,
Socnzfe, Paris, 1856 ; and for the transmission of these to Christianity,
p. 201 and following.
p. 59,
Le D&on
de
see the same,
102
FROM
“ DEMONIACAL
POSSESSION
” TO
INSANITY.
The afflicted, when not too violent, were generally admitted
to the exercises
of public worship, and a kindly system of
cure was attempted, in which prominence
was given to holy
water, sanctified ointments, the breath or spittle of the priest,
the touching
of relics, visits to holy places, and submission
to mild forms of exorcism.
There can be no doubt that
many of these things, when judiciously
used in that spirit of
love and gentleness
and devotion inherited
by the earlier
disciples from “ the Master,” produced good effects in soothing disturbed minds and in aiding their cure.
Among the thousands of fetiches of various sorts then
resorted to may be named, as typical, the Holy Handkerchief of BesanGon.
During many centuries multitudes came
from far and near to touch it; for, it was argued, if touching the garments of St. Paul at Ephesus had cured the diseased, how much more might be expected of a handkerchief
of the Lord himself!
With ideas of this sort was mingled a vague belief in
medical treatment,
and out of this mixture
were evolved
such prescriptions
as the following :
“ If an elf or a goblin come, smear his forehead with this
salve, put it on his eyes, tense him with incense, and sign
him frequently with the sign of the cross.”
“ For a fiend-sick man : When a devil possesses a man, or
controls him from within with disease, a spew-drink of lupin,
bishopswort,
henbane, garlic.
Pound these together,
add
ale and holy water.”
And again: “A drink for a fiend-sick man, to be drunk
out of a church bell: Githrife, cynoglossum,
yarrow, lupin,
flower-de-lute,
fennel, lichen, lovage.
Work up to a drink
with clear ale, sing seven masses over it, add garlic and
holy water, and let the possessed sing the Be&i Imnzaculati;
then let him drink the dose out of a church bell, and let the
priest sing over him the Domine Sancte Pater Owzz~otens.” *
Had this been the worst treatment of lunatics developed
in the theological
atmosphere of the Middle Ages, the world
would have been spared some of the most terrible chapters
*
See Cockayne, Leechdoms, Wart-cunning,
and Star-Craft
in the Rolls Series, vol. ii, p. 177 ; also pp. 355, 356.
priestly saliva, see W. W. Story’s essays.
For
of Early England,
the great
value
of
THEOLOGICAL
IDEAS
OF
LUNACY
AND
ITS
TREATMENT.
103
in its history;
but, unfortunately,
the idea of the Satanic
possession of lunatics led to attempts to punish the indwelling demon.
As this theological
theory and practice became
more fully developed, and ecclesiasticism
more powerful to
enforce it, all mildness began to disappear ; the admonitions
to gentle treatment by the great pagan and Moslem physicians were forgotten,
and the treatment
of lunatics tended
more and more toward severity : more and more generally
it was felt that cruelty to madmen was punishment
of the
devil residing within or acting upon them.
A few strong churchmen
and laymen made efforts to reAs far back as the fourth century, Nemesist this tendency.
sius, Bishop of Emesa, accepted
the truth as developed by
pagan physicians, and aided them in strengthening
it. In the
seventh century, a Lombard
code embodied a similar effort.
In the eighth century, one of Charlemagne’s
capitularies
seems to have had a like purpose.
In the ninth century, that
great churchman
and statesman, Agobard,
Archbishop
of
Lyons, superior to his time in this as in so many other things,
tried to make right reason prevail in this field ; and, near
the beginning of the tenth century, Regino, Abbot of Priim,
in the diocese of Treves, insisted on treating possession as
But all in vain; the current
streaming
most didisease.
rectly from sundry texts in the Christian
sacred books, and
swollen by theology, had become overwhelming.*
The first great tributary poured into this stream, as we
approach the bloom of the Middle Ages, appears to have
come from the brain of Michael Psellus.
Mingling
scriptural texts, Platonic
philosophy, and theological
statements
*
For
a very thorough
and interesting
statement
on the
general
subject,
see
Kirchhoff, Beziehungen
des D&mmenund Hexenwesens
ZUY deutschen Irrenpfege,
in the AZZgemeine Zeitsch?rift ftir Psychiatric,
Berlin, 1868, Bd. xliv, Heft 25. For
Roman
Catholic
Enetpmens.
Psychiatric,
in the care
Maudsley,
authority,
see
Addis
and
Arnold,
Cathdic
Dictionary,
article
For a brief and eloquent
summary, see Krafft-Ebing,
Lehrbuch
der
as above ; and for a clear view of the transition
from pagan mildness
of the insane to severity and cruelty under the Christian Church, see
The
Pathology
of Mind,
Die unfreie
und die freie Kirrhe,
Kirchhoff, as above, pp. 334-336.
London,
1879, p. 523.
Breslau, 1873, p. 251.
For Bishop Nemesius,
See
also
Buchmann,
For other citations,
see TrtZat, p. 48.
see
For
an account of Agobard’s
general position in regard to this and allied superstitions.
see Reginald Lane Poole’s ZZksfrations
of the History of Medievd
Thoug&
London, 1884.
104
FROM
“DEMONIACAL
POSSESSION
” TO
INSANITY.
by great doctors of the Church, with wild utterances
obtained from lunatics, he gave forth, about the beginning of
the twelfth century, a treatise on T/ze Work of Dentons.
Sacred science was vastly enriched
thereby in various ways;
but two of his conclusions,
the results of his most profound thought, enforced
by theologians and popularized by
preachers, soon took special hold upon the thinking portion
of the people at large.
The first of these, which he easily
based upon Scripture
and St. Basil, was that, since all demons suffer by material fire and brimstone, they must have
material bodies; the second was that, since all demons are
by nature cold, they gladly seek a genial warmth by entering the bodies of men and beasts.*
Fed‘ by this stream of thought, and developed
in the
warm atmosphere
of mediaeval devotion, the idea of demoniacal possession as the main source of lunacy grew and blossotned and bore fruit in noxious luxuriance.
’
There had, indeed, come into the Middle Ages an inheritance of scientific thought.
The ideas of Hippocrates,
Celius
Aurelianus,
Galen, and their followers,
were from time to
time revived ; the Arabian physicians, the School of Salerno,
such writers as Salicetus
and Guy de Chauliac,
and even
some of the religious orders, did something to keep scientific
doctrines alive ; but the tide of theological
thought was too
strong ; it became dangerous
even to seem to name possible
To deny Satan was atheism ; and
limits to diabolical power.
perhaps nothing did so much to fasten the epithet “ atheist ”
upon the medical profession as the suspicion that it did not
fully acknowledge
diabolical
interference
in mental disease.
Following in the lines of the earlier fathers, St. Anselm, AbClard, St. Thomas Aquinas, Vincent of Beauvais, all the great
doctors in the mediaeval Church, some of them in spite of
upheld
the idea that insanity
is
occasional
misgivings,
largely or mainly demoniacal
possession, basing their belief
steadily on the sacred Scriptures ; and this belief was followed up in every quarter by more and more constant citation of the text I‘ Thou shalt not suffer a -witch to live.”
No
* See Baas and Werner, cited by Kirchhoff, as above : also Lecky, RationaZism
in Europe, vol. i, D. 68, and note, New York, 1884. As to Basil’s belief in the
corporeality of devils, see his Commentary on Isuiulr, cap. i.
TIIEOLOGICAL
IDEAS OF LUNACY
AND
ITS TREATMENT.
105
other text of Scripture-save
perhaps one-has
caused the
shedding of so much innocent blood.
As we look over the history of the Middle Ages, we do,
indeed, see another
growth
from which one might hope
much ; for there were two great streams of influence in the
Church,
and never were two powers more unlike each
other.
On one side was the spirit of Christianity,
as it proceeded
from the heart and mind of its blessed Founder, immensely
powerful in aiding the evolution
of religious thought and
effort, and especially
of provision
for the relief of suffering by religious
asylums and tender care.
Nothing better
expresses
this than the touching
words inscribed
upon a
But
great mediaeval hospital, “ Christo in pnuperibus suis.”
on the other side was’the
theological
theory-proceeding,
as we have seen, from the survival
of ancient
superstitions, and sustained by constant
reference
to the texts in
our sacred books-that
many, and probably
most, of the
insane were possessed by the devil or in league with him,
and that the cruel treatment
of lunatics was simply punishment of the devil and his minions.
By this current of
thought
was gradually
developed
one of the greatest
masses of superstitious
cruelty that has ever afflicted humanity.
At the same time the stream of Christian endeavour,
so far as the insane were concerned, was almost entirely cut
off. In all the beautiful provision during the Middle Ages
for the alleviation of human suffering, there was for the insane almost no care.
Some monasteries,
indeed, gave them
refuge.
We hear of a charitable
work done for them at
the London Bethlehem
Hospital
in the thirteenth century,
at Geneva in’ the fifteenth, at Marseilles in the sixteenth, by
the Black Penitents in the south of France, by certain Franciscans in northern
France, by the Alexian Brothers on the
Rhine, and by various agencies in other parts of Europe; but,
curiously enough,
the only really important
effort in the
Christian
Church
was stimulated
by the Mohammedans.
Certain monks, who had much to do with them in redeeming Christian
slaves, found in the fifteenth century what
John Howard found in the eighteenth,
that the Arabs and
Turks made a large and merciful provision for lunatics, such
FROM
106
“ DEMONIACAL
POSSESSION ” TO INSANITY.
as was not seen in Christian
lands ; and this example led to
better establishments
in Spain and Italy.
All honour to this work and to the men who engaged in
it; but, as a rule, these establishments
were few and poor,
compared with those for other diseases, and they usually degenerated
into “mad-houses,”
where devils were cast out
mainly by cruelty.*
The first main weapon against the indwelling Satan con_
tinued to be the exorcism ; but under the influence of inferences from Scripture
farther and farther
fetched, and of
theological
reasoning more and more subtle, it became something very different from the gentle procedure
of earlier
times, and some description of this great weapon at the time
of its highest development
will throw light on the laws which
govern the growth of theological
reasoning, as well as upon
the main subject in hand.
A fundamental
premise in the fully developed
exorcism
was that, according
to sacred Scripture,
a main characteristic of Satan is pride.
Pride led him to rebel ; for pride he
was cast down; therefore
the first thing to do, in driving
him out of a lunatic, was to strike a fatal blow at his pride,to disgust him.
This theory was carried out logically, to the letter.
The
treatises on the subject simply astound one by their wealth
of blasphemous and obscene epithets which it was allowable
for the exorcist to use in casting out devils.
The Treastlry
of &orcisms
contains hundreds of pages packed with the
vilest epithets which the worst imagination
could invent for
the purpose of overwhelming
the indwelling Satan.+
* For a veryfull
effects
of this stream
rit/ &tho+we.
full
in regard
and
learned,
of charitable
Paris,
1858.
to the
action
if somewhat
thought.
It is instructive
of the
Church
one-sided,
see Tollemer,
account
of the
Des Urigines
de
to note that. while this book
on slavery
and on provision
earlier
la
C!za-
is very
for the
widows and orphans, the sick, the infirm, captives, and lepers, there is hardly a trace
of any care for the insane.
This same want is incidentally
shown by a typical example in Kriegk,
Aerzte,
HeiZanstaZten und Geisteskranke
im mifteZaZtwZichen Frank-
furt, Frankfurt a. M., 1863, pp. 16, 17 ; also Kirchhoff, pp. 396,397.
On the general
subject, see Semqlaigne,
as above, p. 214 ; also Calmeil, vol. i, pp. 116, 117.
For the
effect of Moslem example in Spain and Italy, see Krafft-Ebing,
as above, p. 45, note.
t Thesaurus
Exorcismarum
atque Canf’urationum
terribi&um, potentissimorum,
eftiracissimorum,
cum PRACTICA probatissima
: quibus
spiritus
maZigni,
Dremones
THEOLOGICAL
IDEAS
OF
LUNACY
AND
ITS
TREATMENT.
107
Some of those decent enough to be printed in these degenerate days ran as follows :
‘6 Thou Iustful and stupid one, . . . thou lean sow, faminestricken and most impure, . . . thou wrinkled beast, thou
mangy beast, thou beast of all beasts the most beastly, . . .
. . .
thou mad spirit, . . . thou bestial and foolish drunkard,
whisperer,
. . .
most greedy wolf, . . . most abominable
thou sooty spirit from Tartarus!
. . . I cast thee down, 0
Tartarean
boor, into the infernal kitchen ! . . . Loathsome
cobbler, . . . dingy collier, . . . filthy sow (scrofa sfercora~a),
. . . malodor. . . perfidious boar, . . . envious crocodile,
asp,
ous drudge, . . . wounded basilisk, . . . rust-coloured
spider, . . . lousy swine. . . swollen toad, . . . entangled
herd (porcari~prdirose),
. . . lowest of the low, . . . cudgelled
ass,” etc.
But, in addition to this attempt to disgust Satan’s pride
with blackguardism,
there was another to scare him with
tremendous
words.
For this purpose, thunderous
names,
from Hebrew and Greek, were imported, such as Acharon,
Eheye,
Schemhamphora,
Tetragrammaton,
Homiiousion,
Athanatos, Ischiros, .&codes, and the like.*
Efforts were also made to drive him out with filthy
and rank-smelling
drugs ; and, among those which can be
mentioned in a printed article,
we may name asafcetida,
sulphur, squills, etc., which were to be burned under his
nose.
Still further to plague him, pictures of the devil were to
be spat upon, trampled under foot by people of low condition, and sprinkled with foul compounds.
But these were merely preliminaries
to the exorcism
Malejciaque omnia de Corykwicks humanis obsssis, tanpam
FZagellir I;u&‘+p~c
frcgantur, expel&ztur,
. . . Cologne, 1626.
Many of the books of the exorcists
were put upon the various indexes of the Church, but this, the richest collection of
all, and including
nearly all those condemned,
was not prohibited
until 1709.
Scarcely less startling manuals continued even later in use ; and exorcisms adapted
to every emergency may of course still be found in all the Benedictionals of the
Church, even the latest.
As an example, see the ManzraZe Benedictionurn published
by the Bishop of Passau in 1849, or the Exorcismus
in Satanam, etc., issued in
189o by the present Pope, and now on sale at the shop of the Propaganda
in Rome.
* See the Conjuratio on p. 800 of the Z’kaurus,
and the general directions
given ou pp. 251, 252.
108
FROM
“ DEMONIACAL
POSSESSION”
TO
INSANITY.
proper.
In this the most profound theological
thought and
sacred science -of the period culminated.
Most of its forms were childish, but some rise to almost
Miltonic grandeur.
As an example of the latter, we may
take the following :
“By
the Apocalypse
of Jesus Christ, which God hath
given to make known unto his servants those things which
are shortly to be; and hath signified, sending by his angel,
. . . I exorcise you, ye angels of untold perversity !
“ By the seven golden candlesticks,
. . . and by one like
unto the Son of man, standing in the midst of the candlesticks ; by his voice, as the voice of many waters;
. . . by
his words, ‘ I am living, who was dead ; and behold, I live
forever and ever; and I have the keys of death and of hell,’
I say unto you, Depart, 0 angels that show the way to
eternal perdition ! ”
Besides these, were long litanies of billingsgate,
cursing,
and threatening.
One of these “scourging
” exorcisms runs
partly as follows :
“ May Agyos strike thee, as he did Egypt, with frogs!
. . . May all the devils that are thy foes rush forth upon thee,
and drag thee down to hell! . . . May . . . Tetragramma.
ton . . . drive thee forth and stone thee, as Israel did to
Achan!
. . . May the Holy One trample on thee and hang
thee up in an infernal fork, as was done to the five kings
of the Amorites!
. . . May God set a nail to your skull, and
pound it in with a hammer, as Jael did unto Sisera! . . . May
. . . Sother . . . break thy head and cut off thy hands, as was
done to the cursed Dagon ! . . . May God hang thee in a
hellish yoke, as seven men were hanged by the sons of Saul ! ”
And so on, through five pages of close-printed
Latin curses.*
Occasionally
the demon is reasoned with, as follows: “ 0
obstinate, accursed, fly ! . . . why do you stop and hold back,
when you know that your strength is lost on Christ?
For it
is hard for thee to kick against the pricks ; and, verily, the
longer it takes you to go, the worse it will go with you.
Begone, then: take flight, thou venomous hisser, thou lying
worm, thou begetter of vipers ! ” j* Thmurus Exor~isntorum,pp.
812-817.
f
Ibid., p. 859.
THEOLOGICAL
IDEAS OF LUNACY
AND ITS TREATMENT.
Iog
This procedure and its results were recognised
as among
As typical, we may mention an
the glories of the Church.
exorcism directed
by a certain Bishop of Beauvais, which
was so effective that five devils gave up possession of a sufferer and signed their names, each for himself and his subordinate imps, to an agreement
that the possessed should be
molested no more.
So, too, the Jesuit fathers at Vienna, in
1583, gloried in the fact that in such a contest they had cast
out twelve thousand six hundred and fifty-two living devils.
The ecclesiastical
annals of the Middle Ages, and, indeed, of
a later period, abound in boasts of such “ mighty works.” *
Such was the result of a thousand years of theological
reasoning,
by the strongest
minds in Europe,
upon data
partly given in Scripture
and partly inherited
from paganism, regarding Satan and his work among men.
Under the guidance of theology, always so severe against
“ science falsely so called,” the world had come a long way
indeed from the soothing treatment of the possessed by him
who bore among the noblest of his titles that of “ The Great
The result was natural:
the treatment
of the
Physician.”
insane fell more and more into the hands of the jailer, the
torturer, and the executioner.
To go back for a moment to the beginnings
of this unIn spite of the earlier and more
fortunate
development.
kindly tendency
in the Church, the Synod of Ancyra,
as
early as 314 A.D., commanded
the expulsion
of possessed
persons from the Church ; the Visigothic
Christians whipped
them ; and Charlemagne,
in spite of some good enactments,
imprisoned
them.
Men and women, whose distempered
minds might have been restored to health by gentleness and
skill, were driven into hopeless madness by noxious medicines and brutality.
Some few were saved as m&-e lunatics
-they
were surrendered to general carelessness,
and became
* In my previouschapters, especially that on meteorology, I have quoted extensively from the original treatises, of which a very large collection
is in my possession; but in this chapter I have mainly availed myself of the copious translations given bv M. H. Dziewicki. in his excellent article in 7’/ae Nineteenth
Centurv
for October, ;SSS, entitled Ea~kzo
Te. For valuable citations on the origin and
spread of exorcism, see Lecky’s Eun@wz Morals (third English
edition), vol. i,
PP. 379-335.
?
I IO
FROM
“ DEMONIACAL
POSSESSION
” TO
INSANITY.
simply a prey to ridicule
and aimless brutality ; but vast
numbers were punished as tabernacles
of Satan.
One of the least terrible of these punishments, and perhaps the most common of all, was that of scourging demons
out of the body of a lunatic.
This method commended itself
even to the judgment of so thoughtful
and kindly a personage as Sir Thomas More, and as late as the sixteenth
century.
But if the disease continued, as it naturally would
after such treatment,
the authorities
frequently felt justified
in driving out the demons by torture.*
Interesting
monuments
of this idea, so fruitful in evil,
still exist.
In the great cities of central Europe, ‘I witch
towers,” where witches and demoniacs were tortured, and
4‘ fool towers,” where the more gentle lunatics were imprisoned, may still be seen.
Devils
In the cathedrals we still see this idea fossilized.
and imps, struck into stone, clamber upon towers, prowl
under cornices, peer out from bosses of foliage, perch upon
Above the
capitals, nestle under benches, flame in windows.
great main entrance, the most common of all representations
still shows Satan and his imps scowling, jeering, grinning,
while taking possession of the souls of men and scourging
them with serpents, or driving them with tridents, or dragging them with chains into the flaming mouth of hell. Even
in the most hidden and sacred places of the mediaeval cathedral we still find representations
of Satanic power in which
profanity and obscenity run riot.
In these representations
the painter and the glass-stainer
vied with the sculptor.
Among the early paintings on canvas a well-known example
represents the devil in the shape of a dragon, perched near
the head of a dying man, eager to seize his soul as it issues
from his mouth, and only kept off by the efforts of the attendant priest.
Typical are the colossal portrait of Satan, and
the vivid picture of the devils cast out of the possessed and
entering into the swine, as shown in the cathedral-windows
of Strasburg.
So, too, in the windows of Chartres
Cathedral we see a saint healing a lunatic:
the saint, with a long
* For prescription
History
of/nsanify
of the whipping-post
in the British
by Sir Thomas
Isles, London,
More, see D. H. T&e’s
1882, p. 41.
THEOLOGICAL
IDEAS
OF
LUNACY
AND
ITS
TREATMENT.
III
devil-scaring
formula in Latin issuing from his mouth ; and
the lunatic, with a little detestable hobgoblin, horned, hoofed,
These examples are but
and tailed, issuing from KS mouth.
typical
of myriads
in cathedrals
and abbeys and parish
churches
throughout
Europe;
and all served to impress
upon the popular mind a horror of everything
called diabolic, and a hatred of those charged with it. These sermons
in stones preceded the printed book; they were a sculptured
Bible, which preceded Luther’s pictorial Bible.*
Satan and his imps were among the principal personages
in every popular drama, and ‘( Hell’s Mouth ” was a piece of
stage scenery constantly brought into requisition.
A miracle-play without a full display of the diabolic
eletnent in
it would have stood a fair chance of being pelted from the
stage.?
Not only the popular art but the popular legends embodied these ideas.
The chroniclers
delighted in them ; the
Lives of ii& Saints abounded
in them ; sermons enforced
them from every pulpit.
What wonder, then, that men and
women had vivid dreams of Satanic influence, that dread
* I cite these instances
out of a vast number
visits to various
cathedrals.
Wright’s
of Caricature
de la
History
For
Cat!zPdraZe de Rouen,
boliques, Rouen,
1878
Sur r’drchitecture,
;
Viollet
etc.
striking
and the Grotesque,
1838
;
Adeline’s
and Martin,
Nouveau
Mplanges
demon emerging from a victim’s
Francis Xavier, see La Divotion
;
Ancient
~~~sten’es
formed
at Coventry,
other societies.
from the
Collection
in T. Sharpe’s
Coventry,
See especially
;
Gailhabaud,
manuscript
the influence
et Symin which
of exorcisms,
;
Grotesque
;
F. J. Mane,
MiracZe-PZaJu
see
and for a
mouth in a puff of smoke at the command
de Din Vendvedis, etc., Plate xxxii.
des MitteZaZfers, Carlsruhe,
Boston, 1880 (translation
be found in Marriott’s
de Z’Architecture
in
see
SfaZZex
Grotesques
d’drc!zboZo,rrip for 1874, p. 136
History of Caricature andthe
1846 ; Dr. Karl Hase,
t See Wright,
noted
grotesques,
1875 ; Langlois’s
Scu&wes
of .an illuminated
under
personally
of mediaeval
London,
Les
le Dnc, Dictionnaire
For a reproduction
devils fly out of the mouths of the possessed
Cahier
which I have
examples
of St.
SchauspieZe
and Sacred Dramas,
German).
Examples
of the miracle-plays
may
of BngZish MiracZe-Plays,
1538 ; in Hone’s
Dissertation
on the Pageants
. ..
ancientlyper-
1828 : in the publications
of the Shakespearean
The Harrowing
of HeZZ, a miracle-play,
edited
and
from
the original now in the British
Museum, by T. 0. Halliwell,
London, 1840.
One
of the items still preserved is a sum of money paid for keeping
a fire burning
in
hell’s mouth.
Says
Hase
(as above, p. 42)
: “
In wonderful
satyrlike
masquerade,
in which neither horns, tail, nor hoofs were ever . . . wanting, the devil prosecuted
on the stage his business of fetching souls,” which left the mouths of the dying “ in
the form of small images.”
112
FROM
“ DEMONIACAL
POSSESSION
” TO
INSANITY.
of it was like dread of the plague, and that this terror spread
the disease enormously,
until we hear of convents, villages,
and even large districts, ravaged by epidemics of diabolical
possession ! *
And this terror naturally
bred not only active cruelty
toward those supposed to be possessed, but indifference
to
the sufferings of those acknowledged
to be lunatics.
As we
have already seen, while ample and beautiful provision was
made for every other form of human suffering, for this there
was comparatively
little ; and, indeed, even this little was
generally worse than none.
Of this indifference and cruelty
we have a striking monument
in a single English worda word originally
significant
of gentleness
and mercy, but
which became significant of wild riot, brutality, and confusion-Bethlehem
Hospital became “ Bedlam.”
Modern art has also dwelt upon this theme, and perhaps
the most touching of all its exhibitions
is the picture by a
great French master, representing
a tender woman bound to
a column and exposed to the jeers, insults, and missiles of
street ruffians.+
Here and there, even in the worst of times, men arose
who attempted
to promote a more humane view, but with
little effect.
One expositor
of St. Matthew,
having ventured to recall the fact that some of the insane were
spoken of in the New Testament
as lunatics and to suggest that their madness might be caused by the moon, was
answered that their madness was not caused by the moon,
but by the devil, who avails himself of the moonlight for his
work. $
One result of this idea was a mode of cure which especially aggravated
and spread mental disease : the promotion
Troops of men and women,
of great religious
processions.
crying, howling, imploring
saints, and beating themselves
with whips, visited
various
sacred
shrines,
images, and
* I shall discuss these epidemics
of possession,
which form a somewhat
distinct
class of phenomena,
in the next chapter.
t The typical picture representing
a priest’s struggle with the devil is in the city
The modern picture is Robert Fleury’s painting in the Luxemgallery of Rouen.
bourg Gallery
at Paris.
$ See Giraldus
Cambrensis,
cited by T&e,
as above,
pp. 8, g.
I
THEOLOGICAL
IDEAS OF LUNACY
AND ITS
TREATMENT.
1Ij
places in the hope of driving off the powers of evil.
The
only result was an increase in the numbers of the diseased.
For hundreds of years this idea of diabolic
possession
It was believed that devils entered
was steadily developed.
into animals, and animals were accordingly
exorcised, tried,
tortured, convicted, and executed.
The great St. Ambrose
tells us that a priest, while saying mass, was troubled by the
croaking of frogs in a neighbouring
marsh ; that he exorcised
them, and so stopped their noise.
St. Bernard, as the monkish chroniclers
tell us, mounting
the pulpit to preach in his
abbey, was interrupted
by a cloud of flies; straightway
the
saint uttered the sacred formula of excommunication,
when
the flies fell dead upon the pavement in heaps, and were cast
out with shovels!
A formula of exorcism
attributed
to a
saint of the ninth century, which remained in use down to a
recent period, especially declares insects injurious to crops
to be possessed of evil spirits, and names, among the animals
to be excommunicated
or exorcised, mice, moles, and serpents.
The use of exorcism
against caterpillars
and grassIn the thirteenth
century
a
hoppers was also common.
Bishop of Lausanne, finding that the eels in Lake Leman
troubled the fishermen, attempted
to remove the difficulty
by exorcism, and two centuries
later one of his successors
excommunicated
all the May-bugs in the diocese.
As late
as 1731 there appears an entry on the Municipal
Register
of
Thonon as follows : “ Resohed, That this town join with other
parishes of this province in obtaining from Rome an excommunication against the insects, and that it will contribute pro
ratn to the expenses of the same.”
Did any one venture to deny that animals could be possessed by Satan, he was at once silenced by reference to the
entrance of Satan into the serpent in the Garden of Eden, and
to the casting of devils into swine by the Founder of Christianity himself.*
One part of this superstition
most tenaciously
held was
the belief that a human being could be transformed
into one
* See Menahrea, Procks IIU Mopw Age contre Zes Animaux, ChamhGry, 18&,
pp. 31 and following ; also Desmazes, Supplices, Prisons et Grace en Fmvm, pp.
For a formula and ceremonies used in excommunicating
in89.90, and 385-395.
sects, see Rydherg,
pp. 75 and following.
36
I
I
114
FROM
“ DEMONIACAL
POSSESSION ” TO INSANITY.
of the lower animals.
This became a fundamental
point.
The most dreaded of predatory animals in the Middle Ages
were the wolves.
Driven from the hills and forests in the
winter by hunger, they not only devoured
the flocks, but
sometimes came into the villages and seized children.
From
time to time men and women whose brains were disordered
dreamed that they had been changed into various animals,
and especially
into wolves.
On their confessing
this, and
often implicating
others, many executions
of lunatics resulted ; moreover,
countless sane victims, suspected
of the
same impossible crime, were forced by torture to confess it,
and sent unpitied to the stake.
The belief in such a transformation
pervaded
all Europe,
and lasted long even in
Protestant
countries.
Probably no article in the witch creed
had more adherents
in the fifteenth, sixteenth,
and seventeenth centuries
than this.
Nearly every parish in Europe
had its resultant horrors.
The reformed Church in all its branches
fully accepted
the doctrines of witchcraft
and diabolic possession, and developed them still further.
No one urged their fundamental
ideas more fully than Luther.
He did, indeed, reject portions of the witchcraft
folly ; but to the influence of devils
he not only attributed
his maladies, but his dreams, and
nearly everything
that thwarted
or disturbed
him.
The
flies which lighted upon his book, the rats which kept him
awake at night, he believed to be devils; the resistance of
the Archbishop
of Mayence to his ideas, he attributed
to
Satan literally working in that prelate’s heart; to his disciples he told stories of men who had been killed by rashly
Insanity, he was quite sure, was caused
resisting the devil.
by Satan, and he exorcised
sufferers.
Against some he appears to have advised stronger
remedies;
and his horror
of idiocy, as resulting from Satanic influence, was so great,
that on one occasion he appears to have advised the killing
of an idiot child, as being the direct offspring of Satan.
Yet
Luther was one of the most tender and loving of men; in
the whole range of literature there is hardly anything
more
touching
than his words and tributes to children.
In enforcing his ideas regarding insanity, he laid stress especially
upon the question of St. Paul as to the bewitching
of the
’
*
THEOLOGICAL
IDEAS
OF
LUNACY
AND
ITS
TREATMENT.
I15
Galatians, and, regarding
idiocy, on the account in Genesis
of the birth of children whose fathers were “ sons of God ”
and whose mothers were “daughters
of men.”
One idea of his was especially
characteristic.
The descent of Christ into hell was a frequent topic of discussion
Melanchthon,
with his love of
in the Reformed
Church.
Greek studies, held that the purpose of the Saviour in making such a descent was to make himself known to the great
and noble men of antiquity-Plato,
Socrates, and the rest;
but Luther insisted that his purpose was to conquer Satan
in a hand-to-hand struggle.
This idea of diabolic influence pervaded his conversation,
his writings, and spread thence to the Luhis preaching,
theran Church in general.
Calvin also held to the same theory, and, having more
power with less kindness of heart than Luther, carried it
out with yet greater harshness.
Beza was especially
severe
against those who believed insanity to be a natural malady,
and declared, “ Such persons are refuted both by sacred and
profane history.”
Under the influence, then, of such infallible
teachings, in
the older Church and in the new, this superstition
was developed more and more into cruelty;
and as the biblical texts,
popularized in the sculptures and windows and mural decorations of the great mediaeval cathedrals,
had done much to
develop it among the people, so Luther’s
translation of the
Bible, especially
in the numerous
editions of it illustrated
with engravings,
wrought with enormous power to spread
and deepen it. In every peasant’s cottage some one could
spell out the story of the devil bearing Christ through the
air and placing him upon the pinnacle of the Temple-of
the
woman with seven devils-of
the devils cast into the swine.
Every peasant’s
child could be made to understand
the
quaint pictures in the family Bible or the catechism which
illustrated vividly all those texts.
In the ideas thus deeply
implanted, the men who in the seventeenth
and eighteenth
centuries struggled
against this mass of folly and cruelty
found the worst barrier to right reason.*
* For Luther, see, among the vast number of similar passages in his works, the
I 16
FROM
“DEMONIACAL
POSSESSION”
TO
INSANITY.
Such was the treatment of demoniacs
developed by theology, and such the practice enforced by ecclesiastic&m
for
more than a thousand years.
How an atmosphere
was spread in which this belief began to dissolve away, how its main foundations were undermined by science, and how there came in gradually a reign
of humanity, will now be related.
II.
BEGINNINGS
OF
A HEALTHFUL
SCEPTICISM.
We have now seen the culmination
of the old procedure
regarding
insanity, as it was developed
under theology and
enforced by ecclesiasticism
; and we have noted how, under
the influence of Luther and Calvin, the Keformation
rather
deepened than weakened the faith in the malice and power
of a personal devil.
Nor was this, in the Reformed
churches
any more, than in the old, mere matter of theory.
As in the
early ages of Christianity,
its priests especially appealed, in
proof of the divine mission, to their power over the enemy
of mankind in the bodies of men, so now the clergy of the
rival creeds eagerly sought opportunities
to establish the
truth of their own and the falsehood of their opponents’
doctrines
by the visible casting out of devils.
True, their
tnethods differed somewhat:
where the Catholic used holy
water and consecrated
wax, the Protestant
was content with
texts of ,Scripture
and importunate
prayer;
but the supplementary physical annoyance
of the indwelling
demon did
Sharp was the competition
for the unnot greatly vary.
Each side, of course, stoutly
happy objects
of treatment.
denied al’1 efficacy to its adversaries’
efforts, urging that any
seeming victory over Satan was due not to the defeat but to
the collusion of the fiend.
As, according
to the Master himcast out devils,” the patient
self, “no man can by Beelzebub
was now in greater
need of relief than before; and more
Tadk T&, Hazlitt’s translation, pp. 251, 252. As to the grotesques in medieval
churches, the writer of this article, in visiting the town church of Wittenberg,
noticed, just opposite the pulpit where Luther so often preached, a very spirited figure
of an imp peering out upon the congregation.
One can but suspect that this
medieval survival frequently suggested Luther’s favourite topic during his sermons.
For Beza, see his Notes on the New Testament, Matthew iv, 24.
\
BEGINNINGS
OF
A
HEALTHFUL
SCEPTICISM.
117
than one poor victim had to bear alternately
Lutheran, Roman, and perhaps Calvinistic
exorcism.*
But far more serious in its consequences
was another
rivalry to which in the sixteenth
century the clergy of all
creeds found themselves subject.
The revival of the science
of medicine, under the impulse of the new study of antiquity,
suddenly bade fair to take out of the hands of the Church
the profession
of which she had enjoyed so long and so
Only one class of diseases remained
profitable a monopoly.
unquestionably
hers-those
which were still admitted to be
due to the direct personal interference
of Satan-and
foremost among these was insanity.+
It was surely no wonder
that an age of religious controversy
and excitement
should
be exceptionally
prolific in ailments of the mind; and, to
men who mutually taught the utter futility of that baptismal
exorcism by which the babes of their misguided neighbours
were made to renounce the devil and his works, it ought not
to have seemed strange that his victims now became more
numerous.$
But so simple an explanation
did not satisfy
these physicians
of souls; they therefore devised a simpler
one : their patients, they alleged, were bewitched, and their
increase was due to the growing
numbers of those human
allies of Satan known as witches.
Already, before the close of the fifteenth century, Pope
Innocent
VIII
had issued the startling
bull by which he
called on the archbishops,
bishops, and other clergy of Germany to join hands with his inquisitors in rooting out these
willing bond-servants
of Satan, who were said to swarm
throughout
all that country
and to revel in the blackest
*
For instances
of this competition,
see Freytag,
Aus dem Jahrk
d. Reforma-
tion, pp. 359-375.
The Jesuit Stengel, in his Dejua’iciis a’ivinis (Ingolstadt,
1651),
devotes a whole chapter to an exorcism, by the great Canisius, of a spirit that had
baffled Protestant
conjuration.
Among the most jubilant
Catholic satires of the
time are those exulting in Luther’s alleged failure as an exorcist.
f For the attitude of the Catholic clergy, the best sources
Jesuit Lit&~
A?znuce.
To this day the numerous treatises
cine ” in use in the older Church
with the devil.
$ Baptismal
eenth century,
.
See Krafft,
exorcism
though
devote
continued
the struggle
themselves
in use among
mainly
the
over its abandonment
Historie zmn Exorcismo,
Hamburg,
1750.
are the confidential
on “pastoral
medi-
to this sort of warfare
Lutherans
had been
till in the eightlong and sharp.
FROM
118
“ DEMONIACAL
POSSESSION ” TO INSANITY.
crimes.
Other popes had since reiterated
the appeal ; and,
though none of these documents
touched on the blame of
witchcraft
for diabolic
possession,
the inquisitors
charged
with their execution
pointed it out most clearly in their
fearful handbook,
the WilciLHanzFnnrr, and prescribed
the
special means by which possession
thus caused should be
met.
These teachings
took firm root in religious
minds
everywhere
; and during the great age of witch-burning
that followed
the Reformation
it may well be doubted
whether any single cause so often gave rise to an outbreak
of the persecution as the alleged bewitchment
of some poor
mad or foolish or hysterical
creature.
The persecution,
thus once under way, fed itself;
for, under the terrible
doctrine
of “ excepted
cases,” by which in the religious
crimes of heresy and witchcraft
there was no limit to the
use of torture, the witch was forced to confess to accomplices, who in turn accused others, and so on to the end of
the chapter.*
The horrors of such a persecution,
with the consciousness of an ever-present
devil it breathed and the panic terror
of him it inspired, could not but aggravate
the insanity it
c!aimed to cure.
Well-authenticated,
though rarer than is
often believed, were the cases where crazed women voluntarily accused themselves of this impossible crime.
One of
the most eminent authorities
on diseases of the mind declares that among the unfortunate
beings who were put to
death for witchcraft
he recognises
well-marked
victims of
cerebral
disorders;
while an equally eminent authority
in
Germany tells us that, in a most careful study of the original
records of their trials by torture, he has often found their
answers and recorded conversations
exactly like those familiar to him in our modern lunatic asylums, and names some
forms of insanity which constantly and unmistakably
appear
* The Jesuit Stengel, professor at Ingolstadt, who (in his great work, Dejudi&‘s diuinis) urges, as reasons why a merciful God permits illness, his wish to glorify
himself
faith
through the miracles wrought by his Church, and his desire to test the
by letting them choose between
the holy aid of the Church and the
of men
illicit resort to medicine,
sion and that brought
ficult to treat.
declares
that there is a difference
by bewitchment,
and insists
between
that the latter
simple possesis the more
dif-
BEGINNINGS
OF
A HEALTHFUL
SCEPTICISM.
* ‘9
among those who suffered for criminal
dealings
with the
devil.*
The result of this widespread terror was naturally, thereA great modern
fore, a steady increase in mental disorders.
authority tells us that, although modern civilization
tends to
increase insanity, the number of lunatics at present is far
less than in the ages of faith and in the Reformation
period.
The treatment of the it possessed,” as we find it laid down in
standard treatises,
sanctioned
by orthodox
churchmen
and
One sort of treatment
jurists,
accounts for this abundantly.
used for those accused of witchcraft
will also serve to show
Of all things in brain-disease,
this-the
“ toyturn imomni~."
calm and regular sleep is most certainly beneficial;
yet, under this practice, these half-crazed creatures were prevented,
night after night and day after day, from sleeping or even
In this way temporary
delusion became chronic
resting.
insanity, mild cases became violent, torture and death ensued, and the “ ways of God to man ” were justified.?
But the most contemptible
creatures in all those centuries
were the physicians
who took sides with religious
orthodoxy.
While we have, on the side of truth, Flade sacrificing
his life, Cornelius Agrippa his liberty, Wier and Loos their
hopes of preferment,
Bekker his position, and Thomasius his
ease, reputation,
and friends, we find, as allies of the other
side, a troop of eminently respectable
doctors mixing Scripture, metaphysics,
and pretended
observations
to support
the “safe side ” and to deprecate
interference
with the existing superstition,
which seemed to them ‘(a very safe belief
to be held by the common people.” 5
* See D. H. Tuke, Chapiers in the Hisfory of the Insane in the British Isles,
London, 1882,
p.
36 ; also Kirchhoff,
p. 340. The forms of insanity especially
mentioned are “ dementia senilis ” and epilepsy.
A striking case of voluntary confessionof witchcraft by a woman who lived to recover from the delusion is narrated
in great detail by Reginald
Scot, in his Discovery of Wifchcraft, London, 1584.
It is, alas, only too likely that the “strangeness”
caused by slight and unrecognised mania led often to the accusation of witchcraft instedd of to the suspicion of
possession.
f See Kirchhoff, as above.
$ For the arguments used by creatures of this sort, see Diefenbach,
Der HexenA long
wahn VW und nach der GZaubempdtmg
in Deutdlmd,
pp. 342-346.
list of their infamous names is given on p. 345.
-,
I20
FROM
“ DEMONIACAL
POSSESSION
” TO
INSANITY.
Against one form of insanity both Catholics
and Protestants were especially cruel.
Nothing is more common in
all times of religious excitement
than strange personal hallucinations, involving
the belief, by the insane patient, that
he is a divine person.
In the most striking representation
of insanity that has ever been made, Kaulbach shows, at the
centre of his wonderful
group, a patient drawing attention
to himself as the Saviour of the world.
Sometimes,
when this form of disease took a milder hysterical character,
the subject of it was treated with reverence, and even elevated to sainthood : such examples as St.
Francis
of Assisi and St. Catherine
of Siena in Italy, St.
Bridget in Sweden, St. Theresa in Spain, St. Mary Alacoque
in France, and Louise Lateau in Belgium, are typical.
But
more frequently such cases shocked public feeling, and were
treated with especial rigour:
typical of this is the case of
Simon Marin, who in his insanity believed himself to be the
Son of God, and was on that account burned alive at Paris
and his ashes scattered to the winds.”
The profundity of theologians
and jurists constantly developed new theories as to the modes of diabolic entrance
One such theory was that Satan could
into the “ possessed.”
be taken into the mouth with one’s food-perhaps
in the
form of an insect swallowed on a leaf of salad, and this was
sanctioned,
as we have seen, by no less infallible
an authority
than Gregory
the Great,
Pope and Saint.
Another theory was that Satan entered the body when the
mouth was opened
to breathe, and there are well-authenticated cases of doctors and divines who, when casting out
evil spirits, took especial
care lest the imp might jump
into their own mouths from the mouth of the patient.
Another theory was that the devil entered human beings during sleep; and at a comparatively
recent period a King of
* As to the frequency among the insane of this form of belief, see Calmeil, vol.
ii, p. 257 ; also Maudsley,
Z’atAoZqpy of Mind, pp. 201, 202, and 418-424 ; also
Rambaud, IZistoire n’e Zu CiviZisatim en France, vol. ii, p. IIO. For the peculiar
aberrations
of the saints above named and other ecstatics, see Maudsley, as above,
pp. 71, 72, and 139, 150. Maudsley’s chapters
on this and cognate subjects are
_certainly among the most valuable
contributions
to modern thought.
For a discussion of the most recent case, see Warlomont,
I.ouise Laieau, Paris, 1875.
BEGINNINGS
OF
A HEALTHFUL
SCEPTICISM.
121
Spain was wont to sleep between two monks, to keep off the
devil.”
The monasteries
were frequent sources of that form of
mental disease which was supposed to be caused by bewitchFrom the earliest period it is evident that monastic
ment.
life tended to develop insanity.
Such cases as that of St.
Anthony are typical of its effects upon the strongest minds;
but it was especially the convents
for women that became
the great breeding-beds
of this disease.
Among the large
numbers of women and girls thus assembled-many
of them
forced into monastic seclusion against their will, for the reason that their families could give them no dower-subjected
to the unsatisfied longings, suspicions, bickerings,
petty jealousies, envies, and hatreds, so inevitable
in’ convent lifemental disease was not unlikely
to be developed
at any
Hysterical
excitement
in nunneries
took shapes
moment.
Notesometimes
comical,
but more generally
tragical.
worthy is it that the last places where executions for witchcraft took place were mainly in the neighbourhood
of great
nunneries;
and the last famous victim, of the myriads executed in Germany for this imaginary crime, was Sister Anna
Kenata SBnger, sub-prioress
of a nunnery near 1Viirzburg.t
The same thing was seen among young women exposed
Insanity, both temto sundry fanatical Protestant preachers.
porary and permanent, was thus frequently developed among
the Huguenots
of France, and has been thus produced in
America, from the days of the Salem persecution
down to
the “ camp meetings ” of the present time.$
* As to the devil’s entering into the mouth while eating, see Calmeil, as above,
vol. ii, pp. 105, 106. As to the dread of Dr. Borde lest the evil spirit, when exorcised, might enter his own body, see T&e, as above, p. 28. As to the King of
Spain, see the noted chapter in Buckle’s Histoy of Civi&dim
in EngZand
t Among the multitude of authorities on this point, see Kirchhoff, as above, p.
337 : and for a most striking picture of this dark side of convent life, drawn, indeed, by a devoted Roman Catholic, see Manzoni’s Promessi
Sposi. On Anna
Renata there is a striking essay by the late Johannes Scherr, in his HammerscUZge
und Historien.
On the general subject of hysteria thus developed, see the writings
of Carpenter and Tuke ; and, as to its natural development in nunneries, see Maudsley, Responsi6iZity in Mental Disease, p. 9. Especial attention will be paid to this
in the chapter on Diabolism and Hysteria.
$ This branch of the subject will be discussed more at length in a future chapter.
-
122
FROM
“ DEMONIACAL
POSSESSION
”
TO
INSANITY.
At various times, from the days of St. Agobard of Lyocs
in the ninth century to Pomponatius
in the sixteenth, protests or suggestions,
mo,re or less timid, had been made by
thoughtful
men against this system.
Medicine
had made
some advance toward a better view, but the theological
torrent
had generally
overwhelmed
all who supported
a
scientific
treatment.
At last, toward the end of the sixteenth century, two men made a beginning of a much more
serious attack upon this venerable superstition.
The revival
of learning, and the impulse to thought on material matters
given during the “ age of discovery,”
undoubtedly produced
an atmosphere
which made the work of these men possible.
In the year 1563, in the midst of demonstrations
of demoniacal possession*by
the most eminent theologians and judges,
who sat in their robes and looked wise, while women,
shrieking,
praying,
and blaspheming,
were put to the torture, a man arose who dared to protest effectively that some
of the persons thus charged might be simply insane; and
this man was John Wier, of Cleves.
His protest does not at this day strike us as particularly
bold.
In his, books, De Pmsfigiis
Dczmonunz and De Lamiis,
he did his best not to offend religious or theological
susceptibilities ; but he felt obliged to call attention to the mingled
fraud and delusion of those who claimed to be bewitched,
and to point out that it was often not their accusers, but the
alleged witches themselves, who were really ailing, and to
urge that these be brought first of all to a physician.
His book was at once attacked
by the most eminent
One of the greatest laymen of his time, Jean
theologians.
Bodin, also wrote with especial power against it, and by a
plentiful use of scriptural
texts gained to all appearance
seemed thus fastened
a complete victory : this superstition
But doubt was
upon Europe for a thousand years more.
in the air, and, about a quarter of a century after the publication of Wier’s book there were published in France the
essays of a man by no means so noble, but of far greater geThe general scepticism
which
nius-Michel
de Montaigne.
his work promoted among the French people did much to
produce an atmosphere in which the belief in witchcraft and
demoniacal
possession
must inevitably
wither.
But this
I
BEGINNINGS
OF A HEALTHFUL
SCEPTICISM.
123
process, though real, was hidden, and the victory still seemed
on the theological
side.
The development
of the new truth and its struggle
against the old error still went on.
In Holland, Balthazar
Bekker wrote his book against the worst forms of the superstition, and attempted
to help the scientific
side by a text
from the Second
Epistle of St. Peter, showing that the
devils had been confined by the Almighty,
and therefore
could not be doing on earth the work which was imputed to
them.
But Bekker’s
Protestant
brethren
drove him from
his pulpit, and he narrowly escaped with his life.
The last struggles of a great superstition
are very freSo it proved in this case.
In the first
quently the worst.
half of the seventeenth
century the crueIties arising from the
old doctrine
were more numerous
and severe
than ever
before.
In Spain, Sweden, Italy, and, above all, in Germany,
we see constant efforts to suppress the evolution of the new
truth.
But in the midst of all this reactionary
rage glimpses of
It is significant
that at this
right reason began to appear.
very time, when the old superstition
was apparently everywhere triumphant,
the declaration
by Poulet that he and his
brother and his cousin had, by smearing
themselves
with
ointment, changed
themselves
into wolves and devoured
children, brought no severe punishment
upon them.
The
judges sent him to a mad-house.
More and more, in spite
of frantic efforts from the pulpit to save the superstition,
great writers and jurists, especially in France, began to have
glimpses of the truth and courage
to uphold it. Malebranche spoke against the delusion;
S&guier led the French
courts to annul several decrees
condemning
sorcerers ; the
great chancellor,
D’Aguesseau,
declared to the Parliament
of Paris that, if they wished to stop sorcery, they must stop
talking about it-that
sorcerers
are more to be pitied than
blamed.*
But just at this time, as the eighteenth
century was approaching, the theological
current was strengthened
by a
great ecclesiasticthe greatest theologian
that France
has
* See Esquirol, Des Mabdies memtah, vol. i, pp. 488, 489 ; vol. ii, p. 529.
I24
FROM
“ DEMONIACAL
POSSESSION
” TO
INSANITY.
produced, whose influence upon religion and upon the mind
of Louis XIV was enormous-Bossuet,
Bishop of Meaux.
There had been reason to expect that Bossuet would at
least do something to mitigate the superstition ; for his writings show that, in much which before his day had been
ascribed to diabolic possession, he saw simple lunacy.
Unfortunately,
the same adherence
to the literal interpretation
of Scripture
which led him to oppose every other scientific
truth developed
in his time, led him also to attack this : he
delivered
and published
two great sermons, which, while
showing some progress
in the form of his belief, showed
none the less that the fundamental idea of diabolic possession
was still to be tenaciously
held.
What this idea was may
be seen in one typical statement : he declared that ‘( a single
devil could turn the earth round as easily as we turn a
marble.” Q
III.
THE
FINAL
STRUGGLE
PINEL
AND
AND
VICTORY
OF
SCIENCE.-
TUKE.
The theological
current, thus re-enforced,
seemed to become again irresistible
; but it was only so in appearance.
In spite of it, French scepticism continued to develop ; signs
of quiet change among the mass of thinking men were appearing more and more ; and in 1672 came one of great significance, for, the Parliament of Rouen having doomed fourteen sorcerers to be burned, their execution was delayed for
two years, evidently
on account of scepticism
among officials ; and at length the great minister of Louis XIV, Colbert,
issued an edict checking
such trials, and ordering the convicted to be treated for madness.
Victory seemed now to incline to the standard of science,
and in 1725 no less a personage
than St. Andre, a court
physician, dared to publish a work virtually showing “ demoniacal possession ” to be lunacy.
* See the two sermons, Sur Zes Dkmons (which are virtually but two forms of
the same sermon), in Bossuet’s works, edition of 1845, vol. iii, p. 236 et seq.; also
On Bossuet’s resistance to other
Dziewicki, in The Nineteenth Century, as above.
scientific troths, especially in astronomy, geology, and political economy, see other
chapters in this work.
THE
FINAL
STRUGGLE
AND
VICTORY
OF
SCIENCE.
Iq
The French philosophy, from the time of its early development in the eighteenth
century under Montesquieu
and
Voltaire, naturally strengthened
the movement ; the results
of post-rpzorrrm examinations
of the brains of the “ possessed ”
confirmed it ; and in 1768 we see it take form in a declaration by the Parliament of Paris, that possessed persons were
to be considered as simply diseased.
St.ill, the old belief lingered on, its life flickering up from
time to time in those parts of France most under ecclesiastical control, until in these last years of the nineteenth
century a blow has been given it by the researches
of Charcot
and his compeers
which will probably soon extinguish
it.
One evidence of Satanic intercourse with mankind especially,
on which for many generations
theologians
had laid peculiar
stress, and for which they had condemned
scores of little
girls and hundreds of old women to a most cruel death, was
found to be nothing more than one of the many results of
hysteria.*
In England the same warfare went on. John Locke had
asserted the truth, but the theological view continued to conMost prominent among those who extrol public opinion.
ercised great power in its behalf was John Wesley, and the
strength and beauty of his character
made his influence in
this respect all the more unfortunate.
The same servitude
to the mere letter of Scripture which led him to declare that
‘I to give up witchcraft
is to give up the Bible,” controlled
him in regard to insanity.
He insisted, on the authority of
the Old Testament, that bodily diseases are sometimes caused
by devils, and, upon the authority
of the New Testament,
that the gods of the heathen are detnons; he believed that
dreams, while in some cases caused by bodily conditions and
passions, are shown by Scripture
to be also caused by occult
powers of evil ; he cites a physician
to prove that “most
Iunatics are really demoniacs.”
In his great sermon on
* For Colbert’s influence, see Dagron, p. 8 ; also Rambaud, as above, vol. ii, p.
155. For St. Andre, see Lacroix, as above, pp, 189, ego. For Charcot’s researches
into the disease now known as Meteorismus hyhvicus, but which was formerly rethrough relations
garded in the ecclesiastical
courts as an evidence of pregnancy
und Geistessthozg, Miinchen, 1891,
chaps.
with Satan, see Snell, Hem+-ocesse
xii and xiii.
126
FROM
“DEMONIACAL
POSSESSION”
TO
INSANITY.
EviZ Angel’s, he dwells upon this point especially ; resists
the idea .that “ possession ” may be epilepsy, even though
ordinary symptoms of epilepsy be present ; protests against
“giving up to infidels such proofs of an invisible world as
are to be found in diabolic possession”;
and evidently believes that some who have been made hysterical
by his own
preaching are “ possessed of Satan.”
On all this, and much
more to the same effect, he insisted with all the power given
to him by his deep religious nature, his wonderful familiarity
with the Scriptures,
his natural acumen, and his eloquence.
The old belief
But here, too, science continued its work.
was steadily undermined,
an atmosphere
favourabie
to the
truth was more and more developed, and the act of Parliament, in 1735, which banished the crime of witchcraft from
the statute book, was the beginning of the end.
In Germany we see the beginnings of a similar triumph
for science.
In Prussia, that sturdy old monarch, Frederick
William
I, nullified the efforts of the more zealous clergy
and orthodox
jurists
to keep up the old doctrine
in his
dominions;
throughout
Protestant
Germany,
where it had
raged most severely, it was, as a rule, cast out of the Church
formulas, catechisms, and hymns, and became more and more
From force of habit, and for
a subject
for jocose allusion.
the sake of consistency,
some of the more conservative
theologians continued to repeat the old arguments,
and there
were’many
who insisted upon the belief as absolutely necesbut it is evident that it had
sary to ordinary orthodoxy;
become a mere conventionality,
that men only believed that
they believed
it, and now a reform seemed possible in the
treatment of the insane.*
In Austria,
the government
set Dr. Antonio Haen at
making careful researches
into the causes of diabolic posses* For John Locke, see King’s Life
of Locke,
pp.
326, 327, For Wesley, out of
his almost innumerable
writings bearing upon the subject, I may select the sermon
on Ed Angels, and his Letter to Dr. Mid&ton ; and in his collected works there
are many striking statements and arguments,
especially in ~01s. iii, vi, and ix. See
great hymn, Ein’
also Tyerman’s
Life of WesZey, vol. ii, pp. 260 d seq. Luther’s
feste Burg, remained, of course, a prominent
exception to the rule ; but a popuIar
See
proverb came to express the general feeling, “Auf Tellfpl reimt siclc ZweifzI.”
Liningin, as above, pp. 545, 546.
THE
FINAL
STRUGGLE
AND
VICTORY
OF
SCIENCE.
127
sion.
He did not think it best, in view of the power of the
Church, to dispute
the possibility
or probability
of such
cases, but simply decided, after thorough investigation,
that
out of the many cases which had been brought to him, not
one supported
the belief in demoniacal
influence.
An attempt was made to follow up this examination,
and much
was done by men like Francke and Van Swieten, and especially by the reforming
emperor, Joseph II, to rescue men
and women who would otherwise have fallen victims to the
Unfortunately,
Joseph had arrayed
prevalent
superstition.
against himself the whole power of the Church, and most of
his good efforts seemed brought to naught.
But what the
noblest of the old race of German emperors could not do
suddenly, the German men of science did gradually.
Quietly
and thoroughly,
by proofs that could not be gainsaid, they
recovered
the old scientific fact established in pagan Greece
and Rome, that madness is simply physical
disease.
But
they now established
it on a basis that can never again be
shaken ; for, in post-morte7n examinations
of large numbers of
“ possessed ” persons, they found evidence of brain-disease.
Typical is a case at Hamburg in 1729. An afflicted woman
showed in a high degree all the recognised
characteristics
of diabolic possession : exorcisms, preachings,
and sanctified
remedies ‘of every sort were tried in vain ; milder medical
means were then tried, and she so far recovered that she was
allowed to take the communion
before she died:
the autopsy, held in the presence of fifteen physicians and a public
notary, showed it to be simply a case of chronic meningitis.
The work of German
men of science in this field is noble
from Wier to Virchow,
have
indeed ; a great succession,
erected a barrier against which all the efforts of reactionists
beat in vain.*
In America, the belief in diabolic influence
had, in the
early colonial period, full control.
The Mathers, so superi’or
to their time in many things, were children of their time in
this: they supported
the belief fully, and the Salem witchcraft horrors were among its results ; but the discussion of
*
cited.
See Kirchhoff, pp. 181-187
; also
Llngin, Religion
und Hennprozess,
as above
I28
FROM
“ DEMONIACAL
POSSESSION
” TO
INSANITY.
that folly by Calef struck
it a severe blow, and a better
influence spread rapidly
throughout
the colonies.
By the middle of the eighteenth
century
belief in diabolic
possession
had practically
disappeared
from all enlightened
countries,
and during
the nineteenth
century
it has lost its
hold even in regions
where
the mediaeval
spirit
continues
strongest.
Throughout
the Middle
Ages, as we have seen,
Satan was a leading
personage
in the miracle-plays,
but in
1810 the Bavarian
Government
refused to allow the Passion
Play at Ober-Ammergau
if Satan was permitted
to take any
part in it ; in spite of heroic efforts to maintain
the old belief, even the childlike
faith of the Tyrolese
had arrived
at a
point which
made a representation
of Satan simply a thing
to provoke
laughter.
Very significant
also was the trial which
took place at
Wemding,
in southern
Germany,
in 1892. A boy had become hysterical,
and the Capuchin
Father
Aurelian
tried
to exorcise
him, and charged
a peasant’s
wife, Frau Herz,
with
bewitching
him, on evidence
that would have cost
the woman
her life at any time during
the seventeenth
Thereupon
the woman’s
husband
brought
suit
century.
against
Father Aurelian
for slander.
The latter urged in his
defence that the boy was possessed
of an evil spirit, if anybody ever was ; that what had been said and done was in
accordance
with the rules and regulations
of the Church, as
laid down in decrees,
formulas,
and rituals
sanctioned
by
popes, councils,
and innumerable
bishops
during
ages.
All
in vain.
The court condemned
the good father to fine and
imprisonment.
As in a famous English
case, “ hell was dismissed, with costs.”
Even more significant
is the fact that recently
a boy declared by two Bavarian
priests to be possessed
by the devil,
was taken, after all Church
exorcisms
had failed, to Father
Mneipp’s
hydropathic
establishment
and was there speedily
cured.”
* For remarkably
priests in Italy and
efforts in which the
filodern Instances of
tiorr in T!ze Popular
interesting
articles showing
the recent efforts of sundry
South Germany to revive the belief in diabolic possessionBishop of Augsburg
took part-see
Prof. E. P. Evans, on
Diabolic Possession and on Recent Recrudescence
of SuperstiScience Monthly for Dec., 1892, and for Oct., Nov., 1895.
THE
FINAL
STRUGGLE
AND
VICTORY
OF SCIENCE.
rzg
But, although
the old superstition
had been discarded,
the inevitable conservatism in theology and medicine caused
many old abuses to be contfnued for years after the theological basis for them Lad really disappeared.
There still
lingered
also a feeling of dislike toward
madmen, engendered
by the early feeling of hostility toward them,
which sufficed to prevent for many years any practical
reforms.
What that old theory had been, even under the most favourable circumstances
and among the best of men, we have
seen in the fact that Sir Thomas More ordered acknowledged
lunatics to be publicly flogged ; and it will be remembered
that Shakespeare
makes one of his characters refer to mad“a dark house and a whip.”
What the
men as deserving
old practice was’ and continued
to be we know but too
well. Taking Protestant
England as an example-and
it
was probably the most humane-we
have a chain of testimony.
Toward the end of the sixteenth
century,
Bethlehem Hospital was reported
too loathsome for any man to
enter; in the seventeenth
century, John Evelyn found it no
better; in the eighteenth,
Hogarth’s
pictures and contemporary reports show it to be essentially what it had been in
those previous centuries.*
Speaking of the part played by Satan at Ober-Ammergau,
Hase says : “ Formerly, seated on his infernal throne, surrounded
by his hosts with Sin and Death,
he opened the play, . . . and . . . retained throughout
a considerable
part ; but
he has been surrendered
to the progress of that enlightenment
which even the Bavarian highlands have not been able to escape ” (p. 80).
The especial point to be noted is, that from the miracle-play
of the present
day Satan and his works have disappeared.
The present writer was unable to
detect, in a representation
of the Passion Play at Ober-Ammergau,
in 1881, the
slightest reference to diabolic interference
with the course of events as represented
from the Old Testament,
or from the i\Tew, in a series of tableaux lasting, with a
slight intermission,
from nine in the morning
until after four in the afternoon.
With the most thorough exhibition of minute events in the life of Christ, and at
times with hundreds
of figures on the stage, there was not a person or a word
which recalled that main feature in the mediaval
Church plays.
The present
writer also made a full collection of photographs
of tableaux,
of engravings
of
music, and of works bearing upon these representations
for twenty years before,
and in none of these was there an apparent survival of the old belief.
* On Sir Thomas More and the condition
of Bedlam, see Tuke, History oj,fue
Insane in the British Isles, pp. 63-73.
One of the passages of Shakespeare
is in
As you Like It, Act iii, scene 2. As to the survival of indifference
to the sufferings
37
130
FROM
“DEMONIACAL
POSSESSION
” TO
INSANITY.
The first humane impulse of any considerable
importance
in this field seems to have been aroused in America.
In the
year 1751 certain members of the Society of Friends founded a small hospital for the insan&, on better principles,
in
Pennsylvania.
To use the language of its founders, it was
to God.”
Twenty
intended “as a good work, acceptable
years later Virginia established a similar asylum, and gradually others appeared in other colonies.
But it was in France that mercy was to be put upon a scientific basis, and was to lead to practical results which were
to convert the world to humanity.
In this case, as in so
many others, from France was spread and popularized
not
only the scepticism
which destroyed the theological
theory,
but also the devotion
which built up the new scientific
theory
and endowed
the world with a new treasure
of
civilization.
In 1756 some physicians
of the great hospital at Paris
known as the H&el-Dieu
protested
that the cruelties
prevailing in the treatment
of the insane were aggravating
the
disease ; and some protests followed from other quarters.
Little
effect was produced
at first;
but just before the
French
Revolution,
Tenon,
La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt,
and others took up the subject, and in 1791 a commission
was appointed to undertake a reform.
of the insane so long after the belief which caused it had generally disappeared,
see some excellent remarks in Maudsley’s ResponsidiZity in Mental Disease, London, 1885,pp. 10-n.
The older English practice is thus quaintly described by Richard Carew (in his
Survey of CornwaU, London, 1602, 1769) : “ In our forefathers’ daies, when devotion as much exceeded knowledge, as knowledge now commeth short of devotion,
there were many bowssening places, for curing of mad men, and amongst the rest,
one at Alternunne in this Hundred, called S. Nunnespoole, which Saints Altar (it
may be) . . . gave name to the church. . . . The watter running from S. Nunnes
well, fell into a square and close walled plot, which might bee filled at what depth
they listed. Vpon this wall was the franticke person set to stand, his backe towards
the Poole, and from thence with a sudden blow in the brest, tumbled headlong into
the pond ; where a strong fellowe, provided for the nonce, tooke him, and tossed him
vp and downe, alongst and athwart the water, vntill the patient, by forgoing his
strength, had somewhat forgot his fury. Then was hee conveyed to the Church,
and certain Masses sung over him ; vpon which handling, if his right wits returned,
S. Nunne had the thanks ; but if there appeared small amendment, he was bowssened againe, and againe, while there remayned in him any hope of life, for recouery.”
*
--
THE
FINAL
STRUGGLE
AND
VICTORY
OF SCIENCE.
13 I
By great good fortune, the man selected to lead in the
movement was one who had already thrown his heart into
In 1792 Pine1 was made physician
it-Jean
Baptiste Pinel.
‘at Bic&re,
one of the most extensive
lunatic asylums in
France, and to the work there imposed upon him he gave
The most
Little was heard of him at first.
all his powers.
terrible
scenes of the French
Revolution
were drawing
nigh ; but he laboured on, modestly and devotedly-apparently without a thought of the great political storm raging
about him.
His first step was to discard utterly the whole theological doctrine
of “possession,”
and especially
the idea that
insanity is the result of any subtle spiritual influence.
He
simply put in practice
the theory that lunacy is the result
of bodily disease.
It is a curious matter for reflection, that but for this sway
of the destructive
philosophy of the eighteenth
century, and
of the Terrorists
during the French
Revolution,
Pinel’s
blessed work would in all probability
have been thwarted,
and he himself excommunicated
for heresy and driven from
his position.
Doubtless the same efforts would have been put
forth against him which the Church, a little earlier, had put
forth against
inoculation
as a remedy for smallpox;
but
just at that time the great churchmen
had other things to
think of besides crushing this particular heretic:
they were
too much occupied
in keeping their own heads from the
guillotine to give attention to what was passing in the head
of Pinel.
He was allowed to work in peace, and in a short
time the reign of diabolism at Bic&.re was ended.
What
the exorcisms and fetiches and prayers and processions,
and
drinking of holy water, and ringing of bells, had been unable
to accomplish
during eighteen
hundred years, he achieved
in a few months.
His method was simple : for the brutality
and cruelty which had prevailed
up to that time, he substituted kindness and gentleness.
The possessed were taken
out of their dungeons, given sunny rooms, and allowed the
liberty of pleasant ground for exercise ; chains were thrown
aside.
At the same time, the mental power of each patient
was developed
by its fitting exercise, and disease was met
with remedies
sanctioned
by experiment,
observation,
and
F:[
1.
1
tI8
1,
I’
I
I’
B
i
I
i
i
,’ :
:
!
’
/
I
1
,
/
1
,i
: :
I
I
/
/
I
/
’ i
!
132
FROM
“ DEMONIACAL
POSSESSION
” TO
INSANITY.
reason.
Thus was gained one of the greatest, though one of
the least known, triumphs of modern science and humanity.
The results obtained by Pine1 had an instant effect,, not
only in France
but throughout
Europe : the news spread
from hospital to hospital.
At his death, Esquirol took up his
work; and, in the place of the old training of judges, torturers, and executioners
by theology to carry out its ideas in
cruelty, there was now trained a school of physicians to develop science in this field and carry out its decrees in mercy,*
A similar evolution of better science and practice
took
place in England.
In spite of the coldness, and even hostility,
of the greater men in the Established
Church, and notwithstanding the scriptural
demonstrations
of Wesley that the
majority of the insane were possessed of devils, the scientific
method steadily gathered strength.
In 1750 the condition of
the insane began to attract especial attention ; it was found
that mad-houses were swayed by ideas utterly indefensible,
and that the practices engendered by these ideas were monAs a rule, the patients were immured in cells, and
strous.
in many cases were chained to the walls; in others, flogging
and starvation
played leading parts, and in some cases the
Naturally enough, John Howard depatients were killed.
clared, in 1789, that he found in Constantinople
a better insane
asylum than the great St. Luke’s Hospital in London.
Well
might he do so; for, ever since Caliph Omar had protected
and encouraged
the scientific
investigation
of insanity by
Paul of &gina,
the Moslem treatment
of the insane had
been far more merciful than the system prevailing throughout Christendom.+
In 1792-_the same year in which Pine1 began his great
work in France-William
Tuke began a similar work in
England.
There seems to have been no connection between
these two reformers;
each wrought
independently
of the
So, too, in
other, but the results arrived at were the same.
* For the services of Tenon and his associates, and aIso for the work of Pinel,
see especially Esquirol, Des M&dies
mental’es, Paris, 1838, vol. i, p. 35 ; and for
the general subject, and the condition of the hospitals at this period, see Dagron,
as above.
t See D. H. Tuke, as above, p. IIO ; also Trblat, as already cited.
THE
FINAL
STRUGGLE
AND
VICTORY
OF
SCIENCE.
‘33
the main, were their methods;
and in the little house of William Tuke, at York, began a better era for England.
The name which this little asylum received
is a monument both of the old reign of cruelty and of the new reign
of humanity.
Every old name for such an asylum had been
made odious and repulsive
by ages of misery;
in a happy
moment of inspiration Tuke’s gentle Quaker wife suggested
a new name ; and, in accordance
with this suggestion,
the
place became known as a (‘ Retreat.”
From the great body of influential
classes in church and
state Tuke received
little aid.
The influence of the theological spirit was shown when, in that same year, Dr. Pangster published his Observations on Medal Disorders, and, after
displaying much ignorance
as to the causes and nature of
insanity, summed up by saying piously, “ Here our researches
must stop, and we must declare that ‘ wonderful
are the
Such
works of the Lord, and his ways past finding out.“’
seemed to be the view of the Church at large:
though the
was at one of the two great ecclesiastical
new “ Retreat”
centres of England, we hear of no aid or encouragement
Nor was
from the Archbishop
of York or from his clergy.
the indirect influence
of the theological
this the worst:
habit of thought and ecclesiastical
prestige was displayed in
the Edi?zburg/t Review.
That great organ of opinion, not
content with attacking
Tuke, poured contempt
upon his
A few of Tuke’s brother
work, as well as on that of Pinel.
and sister Quakers seem to have been his only reliance ; and
in a letter regarding
his efforts at that time he says, “All
men seem to desert me.” *
In this atmosphere
of English conservative
opposition or
indifference
the work could not grow rapidly.
As late as
I 8 I 5, a member of Parliament
stigmatized the insane asylums
of England as the shame of the nation ; and even as late as
1827, and in a few cases as late as 1850, there were revivals
Down to a late period,
of the old absurdity and brutality.
in the hospitals of St. Luke and Bedlam, long rows of the
But
insane were chained
to the walls of the corridors.
* See D. H. Tuke, as above, pp. 116-142, and 512
for April, 1803.
; alsothe Edinburgh Review
I34
FROM
“DEMONIACAL
POSSESSION ” TO INSANITY.
Gardner at Lincoln, Donnelly at Hanwell, and a new school
of practitioners
in mental disease, took up the work of Tuke,
and the victory in England was gained in practice as it had
been previously gained in theory.
There need be no controversy
regarding
the comparative
merits of these two benefactors
of our race, Pine1 and Tuke.
They clearly did their thinking
and their work independently of each other, and thereby each strengthened
the other
and benefited
mankind.
All that remains to be said is, that
while France has paid high honours to Pinel, as to one who
did much to free the world from one of its most cruel superstitions and to bring in a reign of humanity over a wide empire, England has as yet made no fitting commemoration
of
her great benefactor in this field. York Minster holds many
tombs of men, of whom some were blessings to their fellowbeings, while some were but “ solemnly constituted
impostors ” and parasites upon the body politic ; yet, to this hour,
that great temple has received
no consecration
by a monument to the man who did more to alleviate human misery
than any other who has ever entered it.
But the place of these two men in history is secure.
Thomasius,
and Beccaria-the
They stand with Grotius,
men who in modern times have done most to prevent unThey were not, indeed, called to suffer
merited sorrow.
like their great compeers ; they were not obliged to see their
writings-among
the most blessed gifts of God to mancondemned, as were those of Grotius and Beccaria
by the
Catholic Church, and those of Thomasius by a large section
of the Protestant
Church ; they were not obliged to flee for
their lives, as were Grotius and Thomasius;
but their effort
The French
Revolution,
indeed,
is none the less worthy.
saved Pinel, and the decay of English ecclesiasticism
gave
Tuke his opportunity ; but their triumphs are none the less
among the glories of our race; for they were the first acknowledged
victors in a struggle
of science for humanity
which had lasted nearly two thousand years.
CHAPTER
Fh'OMDIABOLKSM
I. THE
XVI.
TO HYSTERIA.
EPIDEMICS
OF “POSSESSION.”
IN the foregoing
chapter I have sketched the triumph of
science in destroying
the idea that individual
lunatics are
the truth that insanity
“ possessed by devils,” in establishing
is physical disease, and in substituting
for superstitious
cruelties toward the insane a treatment
mild, kindly, and based
upon ascertained
facts.
The Satan who had so long troubled individual men and
women thus became extinct;
henceforth
his fossil remains
only were preserved : they may still be found in the sculptures and storied windows of mediaeval churches, in sundry
liturgies, and in popular forms of speech.
But another Satan still lived-a
Satan who wrought on
a larger scale-who
took possession
of multitudes.
For,
after this triumph of the scientific
method, there still remained a class of mental disorders
which could not be
treated in asylums, which were n,ot yet fully explained by
science, and which therefore
gave arguments
of much apparent strength
to the supporters
of the old theological
view : these were the epidemics
of “diabolic
possession ”
which for so many centuries
afflicted various parts of the
world.
When obliged, then, to retreat from their old position in
regard to individual cases of insanity, the more conservative
theologians promptly referred to these epidemics as beyond
the domain of science-as
clear evidences
of the power of
Satan; and, as the basis of this view, they cited from the
Old Testament
frequent references
to witchcraft,
and, from
the New Testament,
St. Paul’s question as to the possible
I35
136
FROM
DIABOLISM
TO HYSTERIA.
bewitching
of
ple of Samaria
Naturally,
class, so large
the Galatians, and the bewitching
of the peaby Simon the Magician.
such leaders had very many adherents in that
in all times, who find that
“ To follow foolish precedents
and wink
With both our eyes, is easier than to think.” *
It must be owned that their case seemed strong.
Though
in all human history, so far as it is closely known, these phenomena had appeared, and though every classical scholar
could recall the wild orgies of the priests, priestesses, and
devotees of Dionysus and Cybele, and the epidemic of wild
rage which took its name from some of these, the great
fathers and doctors of the Church had left a complete answer
to any scepticism based on these facts; they simply pointed
to St. Paul’s declaration
that the gods of the heathen were
devils: these examples, then, could be transformed
into a
powerful argument for diabolic possession.f
But it was more especially the epidemics of diabolism in
medizeval and modern times which gave strength to the theological view, and from these I shall present a chain of typical examples.
As early as the eleventh century we find clear accounts
of diabolical possession taking the form of epidemics of raving, jumping, dancing, and convulsions, the greater number
of the sufferers being women and children.
In a time so
rude, accounts of these manifestations
would rarely receive
permanent record ; but it is very significant that even at the
beginning of the eleventh century we hear of them at the
extremes of Europe-in
northern Germany and in southern
Italy.
At various
times
during
that century we get additional glimpses of these exhibitions, but it is not until the beginning of the thirteenth
century that we have a renewal of
In 1237, at Erfurt, a jumping disease
them on a large scale.
* As to eminent physicians’ finding a stumbling-block
in hysterical
mania, see
Kirchhoffs
article, p, 351, cited in previous chapter.
t As to the MEnads, Corybantes,
and the disease “Corybantism,”
see, for accessible and adequate statements,
Smith’s Dictionary of Antiquities and Lewis and
Short’s Lexicon ; also reference in Hecker’s Essqys u@z tke BZack De& and tke
Danci?~g Mania.
For more complete discussion,
see Semelaigne,
L’AZiPnafion
mentab dans I’Antiquit/, Paris, 1869.
1
iii
/
11
I’
I’
;
,”
THE
EPIDEMICS
OF
“ POSSESSION.”
I37
and dancing
mania afflicted a hundred children, many of
whom died in consequence;
it spread through the whole region, and fifty years later we hear of it in Holland.
But it was the last quarter of the fourteenth century that
There was abundant cause
saw its greatest
manifestations.
for them.
It was a time of oppression,
famine, and pestilence: the crusading spirit, having run its course, had been
succeeded by a wild, mystical fanaticism ; the most frightful
the Black Death-was
depopulatplague in human historycities to villages, and filling
ing whole regions -reducing
Europe with that strange mixture of devotion and dissipation which we always note during the prevalence
of deadly
epidemics on a large scale.
It was in this ferment of religious, moral, and social disease that there broke out in 1374, in the lower Rhine region,
the greatest, perhaps, of all manifestations
of “ possession “an epidemic of dancing, jumping, and wild raving.
The cures resorted to seemed on the whole to intensify
the disease : the afflicted continued
dancing for hours, until
Some declared that they felt
they fell in utter exhaustion.
as if bathed in blood, some saw visions, some prophesied.
Into this mass of “ possession”
there was also clearly
poured a current of scoundrelism
which increased
the disorder.
The immediate
source of these manifestations
seems to
have been the wild revels of St. John’s Day.
In those revels
sundry old heathen ceremonies
had been perpetuated,
but
under a nominally Christian form : wild Bacchanalian
dances
had thus become a semi-religious
ceremonial.
The religious
and social atmosphere
was propitious to the development
of
the germs of diabolic influence vitalized in these orgies, and
they were scattered far and wide through large tracts of the
Netherlands
and Germany, and especially through the whole
region of the Rhine.
At Cologne we hear of five hundred
afflicted at once ; at Metz of eleven hundred dancers in the
streets;
at Strasburg of yet more painful manifestations;
and
from these and other cities they spread through the villages
and rural districts.
The great majority
of the sufferers
were women, but
there were many men, and especially men whose occupations
13s
FROM
DIABOLISM
TO
HYSTERIA.
Remedies were tried upon a large scalewere sedentary.
exorcisms
first, but especially
pilgrimages
to the shrine of
St. Vitus.
The exorcisms accomplished
so little that popular
faith in theIn grew small, and the main effect of the pilgrimages seemed to be to increase the disorder by subjecting
great crowds to the diabolic contagion.
Yet another curative means was seen in the flagellant
processions-vast
crowds of men, women, and children who wandered through
the country, screaming,
praying, beating
themselves
with
whips, imploring
the Divine mercy and the intervention
of
St. Vitus.
Most fearful of all the main attempts
at cure
were the persecutions
of the Jews.
A feeling had evidently
spread among the people at large that the Almighty was
filled with wrath at the toleration of his enemies, and might
be propitiated
by their destruction:
in the principal
cities
and villages of Germany, then, the Jews were plundered, tortured, and murdered by tens of thousands.
No doubt that,
in all this, greed was united with fanaticism ; but the argument of fanaticism was simple and cogent;
the dart which
pierced the breast of Israel at that time was winged and
pointed from its own sacred books : the biblical argument
was the same used in various ages to promote persecution ;
and this was, that the wrath of the Almighty
was stirred
against those who tolerated
his enemies, and that because
of this toleration the same curse had now come upon Europe
which the prophet Samuel had denounced against Saul for
showing mercy to the enemies of Jehovah.
It is but just to say that various popes and kings exerted
themselves
to check these cruelties.
Although
the argument of Samuel to Saul was used with frightful effect two
hundred years later by a most conscientious
pope in spurring on the rulers of France to extirpate the Huguenots,
the
papacy in the fourteenth
century stood for mercy to the
Jews.
But even this intervention
was long without effect;
the tide of popular superstition
had become too strong to be
curbed even by the spiritual and temporal powers.*
* See Wellhausen, article Zsrae2, in the EncycZopedia Britannica, ninth edition ;
alsothe reprint of it in his Hisiory of ZsraeZ, London, 1885, p. 546. On the genera1subject of the demoniacal epidemics, see Isensee, GPsclticAte der Mea’icin, vol.
As to the history of Saul, as a curious landi, pp. 260 et sq. ; also Hecker’s essay.
THE
EPIDEMICS
OF
“ POSSESSION.”
I39
Against this overwhelming
current. science for many gen.
Throughout
the whole of the fifei-ations could do nothing.
teenth century physicians
appeared to shun the whole matter.
Occasionally
some more thoughtful
man ventured to
ascribe some phase of the disease to natural causes; but this
was an unpopular doctrine, and evidently dangerous to those
who developed it.
Yet, in the beginning of the sixteenth
century, cases of
‘6 possession ” on a large scale began to be brought within
the scope of medical research, and the man who led in this
evolution of medical science was Paracelsus.
He it was who
first bade modern Europe think for a moment upon the idea
that these diseases are inflicted neither by saints nor demons,
and that the “ dancing possession ” is simply a form of disease, of which the cure may be effected by proper remedies
and regimen.
Paracelsus
appears to have escaped any serious interference : it took some time, perhaps, for the theological
leaders
to understand
that he had “let a new idea loose upon the
planet,” but they soon understood
it, and their course was
simple.
For about fifty years the new idea was w-e11 kept
under ; but in I 563 another physician, John Wier, of Cleves,
revived it at much risk to his position and reputation.*
Although
the new idea was thus resisted, it must have
taken some hold upon thoughtful
men, for we find that in
the second half of the same century the St. Vitus’s dance
and forms of demoniacal
possession
akin to it gradually
diminished in frequency and were sometimes treated as diseases.
In the seventeenth
century, so far as the north of
Europe is concerned,
these displays of ‘( possession”
on a
great scale had almost entirely
ceased ; here and there
mark in the general development
of the subject, see Tlte Case of Saul, showing
that his Disorder wzs a Real Sjiritunl Possession. by Granville
Sharp, London,
1807,passim.
As to the citation of Saul’s case by the reigning Pope to spur on the
French kings against the Huguenots,
I hope to give a list of authorities in a future
chapter on The Church and Intemaiional
Law.
For the general subject, with
interesting
details, see Laurent, &U&J SUY I’hWoire
de I’Humanitk
See also
Maury, La Magic et i’dstrologie dams I’AntiquifCet au Moyen Age.
* For Paracelsus,
see Isensee, vol. i, chap. xi ; also Pettigrew,
Superstitions
connected with the History and Practice of Medicine and Surgery, London, 1844,
introductory
chapter.
For Wier, see authorities given in my previous chapter.
140
FROM
DIABOLISM
TO
HYSTERIA.
cases appeared, but there was no longer the wild rage extending over great districts and afflicting thousands of pea:
ple.
Yet it was, as we shall see, in this same seventeenth
century, in the last expiring throes of this superstition,
that
it led to the worst acts of cruelty.*
While this Satanic influence had been exerted on so great
a scale throughout
northern Europe, a display strangely like
it, yet strangely unlike it, had been going on in Italy.
There,
too, epidemics
of dancing and jumping seized groups and
communities ; but they were attributed to a physical causethe theory being that the bite of a tarantula in some way
provoked a supernatural
intervention,
of which dancing was
the accompaniment
and cure.
In the middle of the sixteenth
century Fracastoro
made
an evident impression
on the leaders of Italian opinion by
using medical means in the cure of the possessed ; though it
is worthy of note that the medicine which he applied successfully was such as we now know could not by any direct
effects of its own accomplish
any cure : whatever effect it
exerted was wrought upon the imagination
of the sufferer.
This form of “possession,”
then, passed out of the supernatural domain, and became known as “ tarantism.”
Though
it continued much longer than the corresponding
manifestations in northern Europe, by the beginning of the eighteenth
century it had nearly disappeared ; and, though special manifestations of it on a small scale still break out occasionally,
its main survival is the “tarantella,”
which the traveller sees
danced at Naples as a catchpenny
assault upon his purse.?
But, long before this form of “ possession ” had begun to
disappear, there had arisen new manifestations,
apparently
As the first great epidemics of dancing
more inexplicable.
and jumping had their main origin in a religious ceremony,
so various new forms had their principal source in what were
supposed to be centres of religious life-in
the convents, and
more especially in those for women.
* As to this diminution of widespread epidemic at the end of the sixteenth century, see citations from Schenck van Grafenberg
in Hecker, as above ; also Horst.
t See Hecker’s
Epidemics of the MiddZe Ages, pp. 87-104;
also extracts and
observations
in Carpenter’s
&‘ental Pi%y&logy, London, 1888, pp. 312-315 ; also
Maudsley, PathoZogy of Mind, pp. 73 and following.
THE
EPIDEMICS
OF
“POSSESSION.”
141
Out of many examples we may take a few as typical.
In the fifteenth century the chroniclers
assure us that, an
inmate of a German nunnery having been seized with a passion for biting her companions, her mania spread until most,
if not all, of her fellow-nuns
began to bite each other; and
that this passion for biting passed from convent to convent
into other parts of Germany, into Holland, and even across
the Alps into Italy.
So, too, in a French convent, when a nun began to mew
like a cat, others began mewing;
the disease spread, and was
only checked by severe measures.*
In the sixteenth
century
the Protestant
Reformation
gave new force to witchcraft
persecutions
in Germany, the
new Church endeavouring
to show that in zeal and power
she exceeded
the old.
But in France
influential
opinion
seemed not so favourable to these forms of diabolical
influence, especially after the publication
of Montaigne’s Essays,
in 1580, had spread a sceptical
atmosphere
over many leading minds.
In 1588 occurred
in France a case which indicates the
-growth of this sceptical tendency even in the higher regions
of the French
Church.
In that year Martha Brossier,
a
The
country girl, was, it was claimed, possessed of the devil.
young woman was to all appearance
under direct Satanic
influence.
She roamed about, begging
that the demon
might be cast out of her, and her imprecations
and blasphemies brought consternation
wherever
she went.
Mythmaking
began on a large scale ; stories grew and sped.
The Capuchin monks thundered from the pulpit throughout
France regarding
these proofs of the power of Satan : the
alarm spread, until at last even jovial, sceptical King Henry
IV was disquieted, and the reigning Pope was asked to take
measures to ward off the evil.
Fortunately,
there then sat in the episcopal
chair of
Angers a prelate who had apparently
imbibed something
of Montaigne’s
scepticism-Miron;
and, when the case was
brought
before him, he submitted
it to the most time-honoured of sacred tests.
He first brought into the girl’s pres* See citation
from Zimmermann’s
Soiiluffe, in Carpenter,
pp. 3.4, 314.
142
FROM
DIABOLISM
TO HYSTERIA.
ence two bowls, one containing
holy water, the other ordinary spring water, but allowed her to draw a false inference
regarding the contents of each : the result was that at the
presentation
of the holy water the devils were perfectly
calm, but when tried with the ordinary
water they threw
Martha into convulsions.
The next experiment
made by the shrewd bishop was to
similar purpose.
He commanded loudly that a book of exorcisms be brought, and, under a previous arrangement,
his
attendants
brought
him a copy of Virgil.
No sooner had
the bishop begun to read the first line of the &neid than the
devils threw Martha into convulsions.
On another occasion
a Latin dictionary,
which she had reason to believe was a
book of exorcisms, produced a similar effect.
Although the bishop was thereby led to pronounce
the
whole matter a mixture of insanity and imposture, the CapuThey insisted
chin monks denounced
this view as godless.
that these tests really proved the presence of Satan-showing his cunning in covering
up the proofs of his existence.
The people at large sided with their preachers,
and Martha was taken to Paris, where various
exorcisms
were
tried, and the Parisian mob became as devoted to her as
they had been twenty years before to the murderers
of
as they became
two centuries
*later to
the Huguenots,
Robespierre,
and as they more recently
were to General
Boulanger.
But Bishop Miron was not the only sceptic.
The Cardinal de Gondi, Archbishop
of Paris, charged the most eminent physicians of the city, and among them Riolan, to report
Various examinations
were made, and the
upon the case.
verdict was that Martha was simply a hysterical
impostor.
Thanks, then, to medical science, and to these two enlightened ecclesiastics
who summoned
its aid, what fifty or a
hundred years earlier would have been the centre of a widespread epidemic of possession was isolated, and hindered from
’
producing a national calamity.
In the following year this healthful growth of scepticism
continued.
Fourteen persons had been condemned to death
for sorcery, but public opinion was strong enough to secure
a new examination by a special commission, which reported
THE
EPIDEMICS
OF
“ POSSESSION.”
I43
that ‘( the prisoners stood more in need of medicine than of
punishment,”
and they were released.*
But during the seventeenth
century, the clergy generally
having exerted themselves
heroically to remove this “evil
heart of unbelief ” so largely due to Montaigne, a theological
reaction was brought on not only in France but in all parts
of the Christian world, and the belief in diabolic possession,
though certainly dying, flickered up hectic, hot, and malignant through the whole century.
In 1611 we have a typical
An epidemic of possession
having occurred
case at Aix.
there, Gauffridi, a man of note, was burned at the stake as
Michaelis, one of the priestly exorthe cause of the trouble.
cists, declared that he had driven out sixty-five
hundred
devils from one of the possessed.
Similar epidemics occurred
in various parts of the world. +
Twenty years later a far more striking case occurred
at
Loudun, in western France,
where a convent of Ursuline
nuns was “afflicted by demons.”
The convent was filled mainly with ladies of noble birth,
who, not having sufficient dower to secure husbands, had,
according
to the common method of the time, been made
nuns.
It is not difficult to understand
that such an imprisonment of a multitude of women of different ages would pro.
duce some woful effects.
Any reader of Manzoni’s Promessi
Sposi, with its wonderful portrayal
of the feelings and doings of a noble lady kept in a convent against her will, may
have some idea of the rage and despair which must have
inspired such assemblages
in which pride, pauperism, and
the attempted
suppression
of the instincts
of humanity
wrought a fearful work.
What this work was may be seen throughout
the Middle
Ages;
but it is especially in the sixteenth
and seventeenth
centuries that we find it frequently taking shape in outbursts
of diabolic possession.$
* For the Brossier case, see Calmeil, La Fdie, tome i, livre 3, c. 2. For the
cases at Tours, see Madden, Phztasmatn, vol. i, pp. 309, gro.
t See Dagron, chap. ii.
$ On monasteries
as centres of “possession
” and hysterical
epidemics,
see
Figuier, LP MerveiZZeux, p. 40 and following ; also Calmeil, Kingin,
Kirchhoff,
14-4
FROM
DIABOLISM
TO
HYSTERIA.
In this case at Loudun, the usual evidences
of Satanic
One after another of the inmates fell
influence appeared.
strength
apparinto convulsions : some showed physical
of perception
quite
ently supernatural ; some a keenness
and obas surprising ; many howled forth blasphemies
scenities.
Near the convent dwelt a priest-Urbain
Grandiernoted for his brilliancy as a writer and preacher, but careless in his way of living.
Several of the nuns had evidently
conceived
a passion for him, and in their wild rage and
despair dwelt upon his name.
In the same city, too, were
sundry ecclesiastics
and laymen with whom Grandier
had
fallen into petty neighbourhood
quarrels, and some of these
men held the main control of the convent.
Out of this mixture of “ possession ” within the convent
and malignity without it came a charge that Grandier
had
bewitched the young women.
The Bishop of Poictiers took up the matter.
A trial was
held, and it was noted that, whenever
Grandier
appeared,
the “ possessed ” screamed, shrieked, and showed every sign
Grandier fought desperately,
and apof diabolic influence.
pealed to the Archbishop
of Bordeaux,
De Sourdis.
The
archbishop
ordered
a more careful examination,
and, on
separating the nuns from each other and from certain monks
who had been bitterly hostile to Grandier, such glaring discrepancies
were found in their testimony
that the whole
accusation was brought to naught.
But the enemies of Satan and of Grandier
did not rest.
Through
their efforts Cardinal Richelieu,
who appears to
have had an old grudge against Grandier, sent a representative, Laubardemont,
to make another investigation.
Most
frightful scenes were now enacted:
the whole convent resounded more loudly than ever with shrieks, groans, howling, and cursing, until finally Grandier, though even in the
agony of torture he refused to confess the crimes that his
enemies suggested,
was hanged and burned.
On similar results from excitement at Protestant
meetings
Maudsley, and others.
in Scotland and camp meetings in England and America, see Hecker’s Essay, concluding chapters.
THE
EPIDEMICS
OF
“ POSSESSION.”
I45
From this centre
the epidemic
spread:
multitudes
of
women and men were affected by it in various convents;
several of the great cities of the .south and west of France
came under the same influence ; the “possession
” went on
for several years longer and then gradually died out, though
scattered cases have occurred from that day to this.+
A few years later we have an even more striking example among the French
Protestants.
The Huguenots,
who
had taken refuge in the mountains of the Cevennes to escape
persecution,
being pressed more and more by the cruelties
of Louis XIV, began to show signs of a high degree of re.
Assembled
as they were for worship in
ligious exaltation.
wild and desert places, an epidemic
broke out among them,
ascribed
by them to the Almighty,
but by their opponents
Men, women, and children preached and propheto Satan.
sied.
Large assemblies were seized with trembling.
Some
underwent
the most terrible
tortures without showing any
Marshal de Villiers, who was sent against
signs of suffering.
them, declared that he saw a town in which all the women
and girls, without exception, were possessed of the devil, and
ran leaping and screaming
through the streets.
Cases like
this, inexplicable
to the science of the time, gave renewed
strength to the theological
view.?
Toward the end of the same century similar manifestations began to appear on a large scale in America.
The life of the early colonists in New England was such
as to give rapid growth to the germs of the doctrine of possession brought
from the mother country.
Surrounded
by
the dark pine forests;
having as their neighbours
Indians,
who were more than suspected of being children of Satan ;
harassed by wild beasts apparently sent by the powers of
evil to torment the elect;
with no varied literature to while
away the long winter evenings;
with few amusements
save
neighbourhood
quarrels ; dwelling
intently
on every text
of Scripture
which supported
their gloomy theology,
and
* Among the
may be found in
also Bazin, Louis
t See Bersot,
95 et q.
38
many statements
of Grandier’s case, one of the best in English
See
Trollope’s Sketches from Fyenck History, London, 1878.
XZZZ.
Mesmer et le Ma,rrnJ&m
animal,
third edition, Paris, 1864, pp.
146
FROM
DIABOLISM
TO
HYSTERIA.
adopting
its most literal interpretation,
it is not strange
that they rapidly developed ideas regarding the darker side
of nature.”
This fear of witchcraft received a powerful stimulus from
the treatises of learned men.
Such works, coming from Europe, which ‘was at that time filled with the superstition,
acted powerfully
upon conscientious
preachers,
and were
brought by them to bear upon the people at large.
Naturally, then, throughout
the latter half of the seventeenth
century we find scattered cases of diabolic possession.
At. Boston, Springfield,
Hartford,
Groton, and other towns, cases
occurred, and here and there we hear of death-sentences.
In the last quarter of the seventeenth
century the fruit
of these ideas began to ripen,
In the year 1684 Increase
Mather published
his book, Rtmarkable
Providences,
laying
stress upon diabolic possession and witchcraft.
This book,
having been sent over to England,
exercised
an influence
there, and came back with the approval of no less a man
than Richard
Baxter : by this its power at home was increased.
In 1688 a poor family in Boston was afflicted by demons:
four children, the eldest thirteen years of age, began leaping and barking
like dogs or purring like cats, and complaining of being pricked, pinched, and cut; and, to heip the
matter, an old Irishwoman
was tried and executed.
All this belief might have passed away like a troubled
dream had it not become incarnate in a strong man.
This
man was Cotton
Mather,
the son of Increase
Mather.
Deeply religious,
possessed
of excellent
abilities,
a great
scholar, anxious to. promote. the welfare of his flock in this
world and in the next, he was far in advance of ecclesiastics
generally on nearly all the main questions between science
He came out of his earlier superstition
reand theology.
garding the divine origin of the Hebrew punctuation;
he
opposed the old theologic idea regarding the taking of interest for money ; he favoured inoculation
as a preventive
of
* For the idea that America before the Pilgrims had been especially given over
to Satan, see the literature of the early Puritan period, and especially the poetry of
Wigglesworth,
treated in Tyler’s History of American
Literature,
vol. ii, p. 25
et se*.
THE
EPIDEMICS
OF
“ POSSESSION.”
I47
smallpox when a multitude of clergymen and laymen opposed
it; he accepted
the Newtonian
astronomy
despite the outtendency ” ; he took ground
cries against
its “ atheistic
against the time-honoured
dogma that comets are “signs
He had, indeed, some of the defects of his
and wonders.”
qualities, and among them pedantic vanity, pride of opinion,
but he was for his time remarkably
liband love of power;
He had thrown off a large
eral and undoubtedly
sincere.
part of his father’s theology,
but one part of it he could
not throw off: he was one of the best biblical
scholars
of his time, and he could not break away from the fact
that the sacred Scriptures
explicitly
recognise
witchcraft
and demoniacal
possession
as realities,
and enjoin against
witchcraft
the penalty of death.
Therefore
it was that in
1659 he published
his J-FefzorabZe Providences
relating
to
The book, according
to its
Witchrafts
and Possessions.
by the Ministers of Boston
title-page, was “recommended
and Charleston,”
and its stories soon became the familiar
throughout
New
reading
of men, women, and children
England.
Out of all these causes thus brought to bear upon public
opinion began in 1692 a new outbreak
of possession, which
The Rev. Samuel
is one of the most instructive
in history.
Parris was the minister of the church in Salem, and no pope
ever had higher ideas of his own infallibility,
no bishop a
greater love of ceremony, no inquisitor a greater passion for
prying and spying.”
Many
Before long Mr. Parris had much upon his hands.
of his hardy, independent
parishioners
disliked his ways.
Quarrels arose.
Some of the leading men of the congregation were pitted against him. The previous minister, George
Burroughs,
had left the germs of troubles and quarrels, and
to these were now added new complications
arising from the
There were innumerable
wranglings
assumptions of Parris.
and lawsuits;
in fact, all the essential causes for Satanic interference which we saw at work in and about the monastery
at Loudun, and especially
the turmoil of a petty village
where there is no intellectual
activity, and where men and
* For curious examples of this, see Upham’s F3&vy
of Sdrm
Witchcraft,
vol. i.
.
148
FROM
DIABOLISM
TO HYSTERIA.
women find their chief substitute
for it in squabbles,
religious, legal, political, social, and personal.
In the darkened
atmosphere
thus charged
with the
germs of disease it was suddenly discovered that two young
girls in the family of Mr. Parris were possessed of devils:
they complained of being pinched, pricked, and cut, fell into
strange spasms and made strange speeches-showing
the
signs of diabolic possession handed down in fireside legends
or dwelt upon in popular witch literature-and
especially
such as had lately been described
by Cotton Mather in his
book on Memorable Provz’dences.
The two girls, having been
brought by Mr. Parris and others to tell who had bewitched
them, first charged an old Indian woman, aud the poor old
Indian husband was led to join in the charge.
This at once
afforded new scope for the activity of Mr. Parris.
Magnifying his office, he immediately
began making a great stir in
Salem and in the country round about.
Two magistrates
were summoned.
With them came a crowd, and a court
was held at the meeting-house.
The scenes which then took
place would have been the richest of farces had they not led
to events so tragical.
The possessed went into spasms at
the approach
of those charged
with witchcraft,
and when
the poor old men and women attempted
to attest their innocence they were overwhelmed
with outcries by the possessed, quotations
of Scripture
by the ministers, and denunOne especially-Ann
Putnam, a child
ciations by the mob.
of twelve years-showed
great precocity and played a striking part in the performances.
The mania spread to other
children ; and two or three married women also, seeing the
great attention
paid to the afflicted, and influenced
by that
epidemic of morbid imitation which science now recognises
in all such cases, soon became similarly afflicted, and in their
turn made charges
against various persons.
The Indian
woman was flogged by her master, Mr. Parris, until she confessed relations with Satan;
and others were forced or deluded into confession.
These hysterical
confessions, the results of unbearable
torture, or the reminiscences
of dreams,
which had been prompted by the witch legends and sermons
of the period, embraced such facts as flying through the air
to witch gatherings,
partaking of witch sacraments,
signing
THE
EPIDEMICS
OF
“ POSSESSION.”
I49
a book presented
by the devil, and submitting
to Satanic
baptism.
The possessed had begun with charging their possession
upon poor and vagrant old women, but ere long, emboldened
by their success, they attacked
higher game, struck at some
of the foremost people of the region, and did not cease until
several of these were condemned
to death, and every man,
Many
woman, and child brought under a reign of terror.
fled outright, and one of the foremost citizens of Salem went
constantly armed, and kept one of his horses saddled in the
stable to flee if brought under accusation.
The hysterical
ingenuity of the possessed women grew
They insisted
that they saw devils
with their success.
Did
prompting the accused to defend themselves in court.
one of the accused clasp her hands in despair, the possessed
clasped theirs ; did the accused, in appealing to Heaven,
make any gesture, the possessed simultaneously
imitated it ;
did the accused in weariness
drop her head, the possessed
dropped theirs, and declared
that the witch was trying to
break their necks.
The court-room resounded with groans,
shrieks, prayers, and curses; judges, jury, and people were
aghast, and even the accused were sometimes
thus led to
believe in their own guilt.
Very striking in all these cases was the alloy of frenzy
with trickery.
In most of the madness there was method.
Sundry witches charged by the possessed had been engaged
in controversy
with the Salem church people.
Others of
Still others had
the accused had quarrelled with Mr. Parris.
been engaged in old lawsuits against persons more or less
connected with the girls.
One of the most fearful charges,
which cost the life of a noble and lovely woman, arose undoubtedly from her better style of dress and living.
Old
slumbering
neighbourhood
or personal quarrels bore in this
way a strange fruitage
of revenge;
for the cardinal
doctrine of a fanatic’s creed is that his enemies are the enemies
of God.
Any person daring to hint the slightest
distrust of the
proceedings
was in danger of being immediately
brought
under accusation
of a league with Satan.
Husbands and
children were thus brought to the gallows for daring to dis-
FROM
150
DIABOLISM
TO
HYSTERIA.
believe these charges against their wives and mothers.
Some
of the clergy were accused for endeavouring
to save members of their churches.*
One poor woman was charged with “giving
a look toward the great meeting-house
of Salem, and immediately
a
demon entered the house and tore down a part of it.”
This
cause for the falling of a bit of poorly nailed wainscoting
seemed perfectly satisfactory
to Dr. Cotton Mather, as well
as to the judge and jury, and she was hanged, protesting
her innocence.
Still another lady, belonging
to one of the
most respected families of the region, was charged with the
crime of witchcraft.
The children were fearfully afflicted
whenever
she appeared
near them.
It seemed never to
occur to any one that a bitter old feud between the Rev.
Mr. Parris and the family of the accused might have prejudiced the children and directed
their attention
toward the
woman.
No account was made of the fact that her life had
been entirely
blameless ; and yet, in view of the wretched
insufficiency
of proof, the jury brought in a verdict of not
guilty.
As they brought
in this verdict, all the children
began to shriek and scream, until the court committed the
monstrous wrong of causing her to be indicted anew.
In
order to warrant this, the judge referred to one perfectly
natural and harmless
expression made by the woman when
The jury at last brought her in guilty.
under examination.
and, having been brought
into the
She was condemned;
church heavily ironed, was solemnly excommunicated
and
delivered
over to Satan by the minister.
Some good sense
still prevailed, and the Governor
reprieved her; but ecclesiastical pressure and popular clamour were too powerful.
The Governor
was induced to recall his reprieve, and she
was executed, protesting
her innocence and praying for her
enemies.?
Another typical case was presented.
The Rev. Mr. Burroughs, against whom considerable
ill will had been ex* This is admirably brought out by Upham, and the lawyerlike thoroughness
with which he has examined
all these hidden springs of the charges is one of the
main
things which
render
his book
one of the most valuable
contributions
to the
history and philosophy of demoniacal possession ever written.
f See Drake, The Wifchcraff Dehsion in New E&and, vol. iii, pp. 34 et seq.
’
1
THE
EPIDEMICS
OF “ POSSESSION.”
151
pressed, and whose petty parish quarrel with the powerful
Putnam family had led to his dismissal from his ministry,
was named by the possessed
as one of those who plagued
them, one of the most influential
among the afflicted being
Mr. Burroughs
had led a blameless life, the
Ann Putnam.
main thing charged against him by the Putnams being that
he insisted strenuously
that his wife should not go about the
parish talking of her own family matters.
He was charged
with afflicting
the children,
convicted,
and executed.
At
the last moment he repeated
the Lord’s Prayer
solemnly
and fully, which it was supposed that no sorcerer could do,
and this, together with his straightforward
Christian
utterances at the execution, shook the faith of many in the reality
of diabolic possession.
Ere long it was known that one of the girls had acknowledged that she had belied some persons
who had been
executed,
and especially
Mr. Burroughs,
and that she had
; but this for a time availed nothing.
Perbegged forgiveness
sons who would not confess were tied up and put to a sort
of torture which was effective in securing new revelations.
In the case of Giles Corey the horrors of the persecution
Seeing that his doom was certain, and wishing
culminated.
to preserve
his family from attainder
and their property
from confiscation, he refused to plead.
Though eighty years
of age, he was therefore
pressed to death, and when, in his
last agonies, his tongue was pressed out of his mouth, the
sheriff with his walking-stick
thrust it back again.
Everything
was made to contribute to the orthodox view
of possession.
On one occasion,
when a cart conveying
eight condemned persons to the place of execution stuck fast
in the mire, some of the possessed declared
that they saw
the devil trying to prevent the punishment of his associates.
Confessions
of witchcraft
abounded ; but the way in which
these confessions were obtained is touchingly
exhibited in a
statement
afterward
made by several women.
In explaining the reasons why, when charged with afflicting
sick persons, they made a false confession, they said :
‘I . . . By reason of that suddain surprizal, we knowing
ourselves
altogether
Innocent
of that Crime, we were all
exceedingly
astonished
and amazed, and consternated
and
152
FROM
DIABOLISM
TO
HYSTERIA.
affrighted
even out of our Reason;
and our nearest and
dearest Relations, seeing us in that dreadful condition, and
knowing our great danger, apprehending
that there was no
other way to save our lives, . . . out of tender . . . pitty
perswaded
us to confess what we did confess.
And indeed that Confession, that it is said we made, was no other
than what was suggested
to us by some Gentlemen;
they
telling us, that we were Witches,
and they knew it, and we
knew it, and they knew that we knew it, which made us
think that it was so; and our understanding,
our reason,
and our faculties almost gone, we were not capable of judging our condition ; as also the hard measures they used
with us, rendred us uncapable of making our Defence, but
said anything and everything
which they desired, and most
of what we said, was in effect a consenting
to what they
said. . . .” *
Case after case, in which hysteria, fanaticism, cruelty, injustice, and trickery played their part, was followed up to
In a short time twenty persons had been put
the scaffold.
to a cruel death, and the number of the accused grew larger
and larger.
The highest position and the noblest character
formed no barrier.
Daily the possessed became more bold,
more tricky, and more wild.
No plea availed anything.
In
behalf of several women, whose lives had been of the purest
and gentlest, petitions were presented, but to no effect.
A
scriptural text was always ready to aid in the repression
of
mercy:
it was remembered
that “Satan
himself is transformed into an angel of light,” and above all resounded the
Old Testament
injunction,
which had sent such multitudes
in Europe to the torture-chamber
and the stake, “Thou shalt
not suffer a witch to live.”
Such clergymen
as Noyes, Parris, and Mather, aided by
such judges as Stoughton
and Hathorn, left nothing undone
to stimulate these proceedings.
The great Cotton Mather
based upon this outbreak
of disease thus treated his famous
book, 744ona’rrs of t/le JnvisibZe World, thanking
God for the
triumphs over Satan thus gained at Salem ; and his book received the approbation
of the Governor of the Province, the
* See C&f,
in Drake,
vol. ii
; alsoUpham.
i
THE
II
?
EPIDEMICS
OF
“POSSESSION.”
I53
President
of Harvard
College, and various eminent theologians in Europe as well as in America.
But, despite such efforts as these, observation, and thought
upon observation,
which form the beginning
of all true science, brought in a new order of things.
The people began
to fall away.
Justice Bradstreet,
having committed thirty or
forty persons, became aroused to the absurdity of the whole
matter;
the minister of Andover had the good sense to resist the theological
view ; even so high a personage as Lady
Phips, the wife of the Governor,
began to show lenity.
Each of these was, in consequence
of this disbelief,
charged with collusion with Satan ; but such charges seemed
now to lose their force.
In the midst of all this delusion and terrorism stood Cotton Mather firm as ever.
His efforts to uphold the declinBut he at la&vent
one step
ing superstition
were heroic.
Being himself possessed of a mania for myth-maktoo far.
ing and wonder-mongering,
and having described
a case of
witchcraft
with possibly greater
exaggeration
than usual,
he was confronted
by Robert
Calef.
Calef was a Boston
merchant, who appears to have united the good sense of a
man of business to considerable
shrewdness
in observation,
power in thought, and love for truth; and he began writing
to Mather and others, to show the weak points in the system.
Mather, indignant that a person so much his inferior dared
dissent from his opinion, at first affected to despise Calef ;
but, as Calef pressed him more and more closely, Mather
denounced
him, calling him among other things “A Coal
from Hell.”
All to no purpose:
Calef fastened still more
firmly upon the flanks of the great theologian.
Thought
and reason now began to resume their sway.
The possessed having accused certain men held in very
high respect, doubts began to dawn upon the community at
large.
Here was the repetition
of that which had set men
thinking in the German
bishoprics when those under trial
for witchcraft
there had at last, in their desperation or madness, charged
the very bishops and the judges upon the
bench with sorcery.
The party of reason grew stronger.
The Rev. Mr. Parris was soon put upon the defensive:
for
some of the possessed began to confess that they had ac-
I
I54
FROM
DIABOLISM
TO HYSTERIA.
cused people wrongfully.
Herculean efforts were made by
certain of the clergy and devout laity to support the declining belief, but the more thoughtful
turned more and more
against it; jurymen
prominent
in convictions
solemnly retracted their verdicts
and publicly craved pardon of God
and man. Most striking of all was the case of Justice Sewall.
A man of the highest character,
he had in view of authority
deduced from Scripture
and the principles laid down by the
great English judges, unhesitatingly
condemned the accused;
but reason now dawned upon him. He looked back and saw
the baselessness of the whole proceedings,
and made a public
statement
of his errors.
His diary contains many passages
showing deep contrition, and ever afterward, to the end of
his life, he was wont, on one day in the year, to enter into
solitude, and there remain all the day long in fasting, prayer,
and penitence?
Chief-Justice
Stoughton
never yielded.
To the last he
lamented the “ evil spirit of unbelief” which was thwarting
the glorious work of freeing New England from demons.
The church of Salem solemnly revoked the excommunications of the condemned
and drove Mr. Parris from the
pastorate.
Cotton Mather passed his last years in groaning
over the decline of the faith and the ingratitude
of a people
for whom he had done so much.
Very significant
is one of
his complaints, since it shows the evolution of a more scientific mode of thought abroad as well as at home: he laments
in his diary that English
publishers
gladly printed Calef’s
book, but would no longer publish his own, and he declares
this I‘ an attack upon the glory of the Lord.”
About forty years after the ‘New England epidemic of
“ possession ” occurred another typical series of phenomena
In 1727 there died at the French capital a simple
in France.
and kindly ecclesiastic,
the Archdeacon
Paris.
He had lived
a pious, Christian life,and was endeared to multitudes by his
charity ; unfortunately,
he had espoused the doctrine of Jansen on grace and free will, and, though he remained in the
Gallican Church, he and those who thought like him were
opposed by the Jesuits, and finally condemned
by a papal
bull.
His remains having been buried in the cemetery of St.
THE
EPIDEMICS
OF
“POSSESSION.”
I55
Mkdard, the Jansenists
flocked to say their prayers
at his
grave, and soon miracles began to be wrought there.
Ere
The sick being brought and laid
long they were multiplied.
upon the tombstone, many were cured.
Wonderful
stories
The myth-making tendency
were attested by eye-witnesses.
-the
passion for developing,
enlarging, and spreading
tales
of wonder-came
into full play and was given free course.
Many thoughtful
men satisfied themselves of the truth of
One of the foremost English scholars
these representations.
came over, examined
into them, and declared
that there
could be no doubt as to the reality of the cures.
This state of things continued for about four years, when,
in 1731, more violent effects showed themselves.
Sundry
persons approaching
the tomb were thrown into convulsions,
hysterics, and catalepsy ; these diseases spread, became epidemic, and soon multitudes
were similarly afflicted.
Both
religious parties made the most of these cases.
In vain did
such great authorities
in medical science as Hecquet
and
Lorry attribute the whole to natural causes : the theologians
on both sides declared
them supernatural-the
Jansenists
attributing
them to God, the Jesuits to Satan.
Of late years such cases have been treated in France with
much shrewdness.
When, about the middle of the present
century, the Arab priests in Algiers tried to arouse fanaticism against the French Christians by performing
miracles,
the French Government,
instead of persecuting
the priests,
sent Robert-Houdin,
the most renowned juggler of his time,
to the scene of action, and for every Arab miracle Houdin
performed
two : did an Arab marabout
turn a rod into a
serpent, Houdin turned his rod into two serpents;
and afterward showed the people how he did it.
So, too, at the last International
Exposition,
the French
Government,
observing
the evil effects produced
by the
mania for table turning and tipping, took occasion, when a
great number of French
schoolmasters
and teachers were
visiting
the exposition,
to have public lectures
given in
which all the business of dark closets, hand-tying, materialization of spirits, presenting
the faces of the departed, and
ghostly
portraiture
was fully performed
by professional
mountebanks,
and afterward as fully explained.
156
FROM
DIABOLISM
TO
HYSTERIA.
So in this case.
The Government
simply ordered the
gate of the cemetery
to be locked, and when the crowd
could no longer approach the tomb the miracles ceased.
A
little Parisian ridicule helped to end the matter.
A wag
wrote up over the gate of the cemetery:
“ De par le Roi, defense A Dieu
De faire des miracles dans ce lieu “-
which, being translated
English, is-
from doggerel
French
into doggerel
“By order of the king, the Lord must forbear
To work any more of his miracles here.”
But the theological
spirit
remained
powerful.
The
French Revolution
had not then intervened
to bring it under healthy
limits.
The agitation
was maintained,
and,
though the miracles and cases of possession were stopped
in the cemetery, it spread.
Again full course was given to
myth-making
and the retailing of wonders.
It was said that
men had allowed themselves to be roasted before slow fires,
and had been afterward
found uninjured;
that some had
enormous
weights piled upon them, but had supernatural
powers of resistance
given them ; and that, in one case, a
voluntary crucifixion
had taken place.
This agitation was long, troublesome, and no doubt robbed
many temporarily
or permanently
of such little brains as
It was only when the violence had become
they possessed.
an old story and the charm of novelty had entirely worn off,
and the afflicted found themselves
no longer regarded with
especial interest, that the epidemic died away.*
But in Germany at that time the outcome of this belief
In 1749 Maria Renata Sanger, sub-priwas far more cruel.
oress of a convent at Wiirzburg,
was charged with bewitchThere was the usual story-the
same
ing her fellow-nuns.
essential facts as at Loudun-women
shut up against their
will, dreams of Satan disguised as a young man, petty jeal* See Madden, PAantasmata, chap. xiv ; also Sir James Stephen, History o/
France, lecture xxvi ; also Henry Martin, Histoire de Fmnce, vol. XV, pp. 168 et
se*. ; also Calmeil, liv. V, chap. xxiv; also Hecker’s essay; and, for samples of
myth-making, see the apocryphal Souvenirs de G&y.
BEGINNINGS
OF
HELPFUL
SCEPTICISM.
‘57
ousies, spites, quarrels, mysterious
uproar, trickery, utensils
thrown about in a way not to be accounted for, hysterical
shrieking
and convulsions,
and, finally, the torture, confession, and execution of the supposed culprit.*
Various epidemics of this sort broke oui. from time to
time in other parts of the world, though happily, as modern
scepticism prevailed, with less cruel results.
In 1760 some congregations
of Calvinistic
Methodists
in
Wales became so fervent that they began leaping for joy.
The mania spread, and gave rise to a sect called the “JumpA similar outbreak took place afterward in England,
ers.”
and has been repeated at various times and places since in
our own country. +
In 1780 came another outbreak in France; but this time it
was not the Jansenists
who were affected, but the strictly orA large number of young girls between twelve and
thodox.
nineteen years of age, having been brought together at the
church of St. Roth, in Paris, with preaching and ceremonies
calculated to arouse hysterics, one of them fell into convulsions.
Immediately
other children
were similarly
taken,
until some fifty or sixty’ were engaged in the same antics.
This mania spread to other churches and gatherings,
proved
very troublesome,
and in some cases led to results especially
painful.
About the same period came a similar outbreak
among
the Protestants
of the Shetland
Isles.
A woman having
been seized with convulsions
at church, the disease spread
to others, mainly women, who fell into the usual contortions
and wild shriekings.
A very effectiye cure proved to be a
threat to plunge the diseased into a neighbouring
pond.
II.
BEGINNINGS
OF
HELPFUL
SCEPTICISM.
But near the end’of the eighteenth
century a fact very
important
for science was established.
It was found that
these manifestations
do not arise in all cases from supernatural sources.
In 1787 came the noted case at Hodden
* See Soldan,
+ See Adams’s
Scherr, Diefenbach,
and others.
Dictionary of AN Religions, article cm Jumpen
;
also Hecker.
158
FROM
DIABOLISM
TO HYSTERIA.
Bridge, in Lancashire.
A girl working in a cotton manufactory there put a mouse into the bosom of another girl who
had a great dread of mice.
The girl thus treated immediately
went into convulsions,
which lasted twenty-four
hours.
Shortly afterward three other girls \vere seized with
like convulsions, a little later six more, and then others, until, in all, twenty-four
were attacked.
Then came a fact
throwing
a flood of light upon earlier occurrences.
This
epidemic, being noised abroad, soon spread to another factory five miles distant.
The patients there suffered from
strangulation,
danced, tore their hair, and dashed their
heads against the walls.
There was a strong belief that it
was a disease introduced in cotton, but a resident physician
amused the patients with electric
shocks, and the disease
died out.
In 1801 came a case of like import in the Charit& HosA girl fell into strong convulsions.
The
pital in Berlin.
disease proved contagious, several others becoming afflicted
in a similar way; but nearly all were finally cured, principally by the administration
of opium, which appears at that
time to have been a fashionable remedy.
Of the same sort was a case at Lyons in 1851.
Sixty
women
were working together in a shop, when one of them,
after a bitter quarrel with her husband, fell into a violent
The other women, sympathizing
with
nervous paroxysm.
her, gathered about to assist her, but one after another fell
into a similar condition, until twenty were thus prostrated,
and a more general spread of the epidemic was only prevented by clearing the premises.*
But while these casks seemed, in the eye of Science, fatal
to the old conception
of diabolic influence, the great majority of such epidemics, when unexplained,
continued to give
strength to the older view.
In Roman Catholic countries these. manifestations,
as we
have seen, have generally appeared in convents, or in churches
where young girls are brought together for their first communion, or at shrines where miracles are supposed to be wrought.
* For these examples and others, see Tuke, 1nJfuence of t& Mind upon tfze
Body, vol. i, pp. 100, 277 ; also Heck&s essay.
BEGINNINGS
OF HELPFUL
SCEPTICISM.
‘59
In Protestant
countries
they appear in times of great religious excitement, and especially when large bodies of young
women are submitted
to the influence of noisy and frothy
preachers.
Well-known
examples
of this in America
are
seen in the “Jumpers,”
“Jerkers,”
and various revival exespecially
among
the negroes
and “poor
travagances,
whites ” of the Southern States.
The proper conditions being given for the development
of the disease-generally
a congregation
composed mainly of
young women-any
fanatic or overzealous priest or preacher
may stimulate hysterical
seizures, which are very likely to
become epidemic.
As a recent typical example on a large scale, I take the
case of diabolic possession at Morzine, a French village on
the borders of Switzerland ; and it is especially instructive,
because it was thoroughly
investigated
by a competent man
of science.
About the year 1853 a sick girl at Morzine, acting
strangely, was thought to be possessed of the devil, and was
taken to Besancon, where she seems to have fallen into the
hands of kindly and sensible ecclesiastics,
and, under the
operation
of the relics preserved
in the cathedral
thereespecially the handkerchief
of Christ-the
devil was cast out
and she was cured.
Naturally, much was said of the affair
among the peasantry, and soon other cases began to show
themselves.
The priest at Morzine attempted
to quiet the
matter by avowing his disbelief in such cases of possession;
but immediately
a great outcry was raised against him, especially by the possessed themselves.
The matter was now
widely discussed,
and the malady spread rapidly;
mythmaking and wonder-mongering
began ; amazing accounts
were thus developed
and sent out to the world.
The afflicted were said to have climbed trees like squirrels;
to
have shown superhuman
strength ; to have exercised
the
gift of tongues,
speaking
in German,
Latin, and even in
Arabic;
to have given accounts of historical
events they
had never heard of ; and to have revealed the secret thoughts
of persons about them.
Mingled with such exhibitions
of
power were outbursts of blasphemy and obscenity.
But suddenly came something
more miraculous, appar-
160
FROM
DIABOLISM
TO
HYSTERIA.
Without any assigned cause,
ently, than all these wonders.
this epidemic
of possession diminished
and the devil disappeared.
Not long after this, Prof. Tissot, an eminent member of
the medical faculty at Diion, visited the spot and began a
series of researches,
of which he afterward
published a full
account.
He tells us that he found some reasons for the
sudden departure of Satan which had never been published.
He discovered
that the Government
had quietly removed
one or two very zealous ecclesiastics
to another parish, had
sent the police to Morzine to maintain order, and had given
instructions
that those who acted outrageously
should be
simply treated as lunatics and sent to asylums.
This policy,
so accordant
with French methods of administration,
cast
out the devil: the possessed were mainly cured, and the
matter appeared ended.
But Dr. Tissot found a few of the diseased still remaining, and he soon satisfied himself by various investigations
and experiments
that they were simply suffering from hysOne of his investigations
is especially
curious.
In
teria.
order to observe the patients more carefully, he invited some
of them to dine with him, gave them without their knowledge holy water in their wine or their food, and found that
it produced no effect whatever, though its results upon the
demons when the possessed knew of its presence
had been.
very marked.
Even after large draughts of holy water had,_
been thus given, the possessed remained afflicted, urged that
the devil should be cast out, and some of them even went
into convulsions;
the devil apparently speaking from their
mouths.
It was evident that Satan had not the remotest
idea that he had been thoroughly dosed with the most effective medicine known to the older theology.*
At last Tissot published the results of his experiments,
It resembled
and the stereotyped
answer was soon made.
the answer made by the clerical opponents of Galileo when
he showed them the moons of Jupiter through his telescope,
and they declared that the moons were created by the tele* For an amazing delineation of the curative and other virtues of holy water, see
the Abbe Gaume, L’Eau &kite au XZXme Sikle, Paris, 1866.
BEGINNINGS
OF HELPFUL
SCEPTICISM.
161
scope.
The clerical opponents of Tissot insisted that the
non-effect of the holy water upon the demons proved nothing save the extraordinary
cunning of Satan ; that the archfiend wished it to be thought that he does not exist, and so
overcame his repugnance
to holy water, gulping it down in
order to conceal his presence.
Dr. Tissot also examined into the gift of tongues exerAs to German and Latin, no great
cised by the possessed.
difficulty was presented : it was by no means hard to suppose that some of the girls might have learned some words
of the former language
in the neighbouring
Swiss cantons
where German was spoken, or even in Germany itself; and
as to Latin, considering
that they had heard it from their
childhood in the church, there seemed nothing very wonderful in their uttering some words in that language also.
As
to Arabic, had they really spoken it, that might have been
accounted for by the relations of the possessed with Zouaves
or Spahis from the French army; but, as Tissot could discover no such relations,
he investigated
this point as the
most puzzling of all.
On a close inquiry, he found that all the wonderful examples of speaking Arabic were reduced to one.
He then
asked whether
there was any other person speaking
or
knowing Arabic in the town.
He was answered
that there
was not.
He asked whether any person had lived there, so
far as any one could remember, who had spoken or understood Arabic, and he was answered in the negative.
He
then asked the witnesses how they knew that the language
spoken by the girl was Arabic:
no answer was vouchsafed
him : but he was overwhelmed
with such stories as that of a
pig which, at sight of the cross on the village church, suddenly refused to go farther;
and he was denounced
thoroughly in the,-,Jerical
newspapers
for declining
to accept
such evidence,
At Tissot’s
visit in 1863 the possession
had generally
ceased, and the cases left were few and quiet.
But his visits
stirred a new controversy,
and its echoes were long and
loud in the pulpits and clerical journals.
Believers
insisted
that Satan had been removed
by the intercession
of the
Blessed Virgin ; unbelievers
hinted that the main cause of
39
162
FROM
DIABOLISM
TO
HYSTERIA.
the deliverance
was the reluctance
of the possessed to be
shut up in asylums.
Under these circumstances
the Bishop of Annecy
announced that he would visit Morzine
to administer
confirmation, and word appears to have spread that he would
give a more orthodox completion
to the work already done,
by exorcising the devils who remained.
Immediately
several
new cases of possession
appeared ; young girls who had
been cured were again affected;
the embers thus kindled
were fanned into a flame by a “mission ” which sundry
priests held in the parish to arouse the people to their religious duties-a
mission in Roman Catholic countries being
akin to a “revival ” among some Protestant
sects.
Multitudes of young women, excited by the preaching and appeals
of the clergy, were again thrown into the old disease, and at
the coming of the good bishop it culminated.
The account is given in the words of an eye-witness:
“At the solemn entrance of the bishop into the church,
the possessed persons threw themselves on the ground before
him, or endeavoured
to throw themselves upon him, screaming frightfully,
cursing, blaspheming,
so that the people at
large were struck with horror.
The possessed followed the
bishop, hooted him, and threatened him, up to the middle of
Order was only .established by the intervention
the church.
During the confirmation
the diseased reof the soldiers.
doubled their howls and infernal vociferations,
and tried to
spit in the face of the bishop and to tear off his pastoral
At the moment when the prelate gave his beneraiment.
diction a still niore outrageous
scene took place.
The violence of the diseased was carried to fury, and from all parts
of the church arose yells and fearful howling;
so frightful
was the din that tears fell from the eyes of many of the
spectators,
and many strangers
were thrown into consternation.”
Among the very large number of these diseased persons
only two were
there were only two men; of the remainder
were young women
of advanced age; the great majority
between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five years.
The public authorities
shortly afterward
intervened, and
sought to cure the disease and to draw the people out of
THEOLOGICAL
“ RESTATEMENTS.”
163
their mania by singing, dancing, and sports of various sorts,
until at last it was brought under control.*
Scenes similar to these, in their essential character,
have
arisen more recently
in Protestant
countries, but with the
difference that what has been generally attributed by Roman
Catholic ecclesiastics
to Satan is attributed
by Protestant
ecclesiastics
to the Almighty.
Typical
among the greater
exhibitions of this were those which began in the Methodist
chapel at Redruth
in Cornwall-convulsions,
leaping, jumping, until some four thousand persons were seized by it.
The same thing is seen in the ruder parts of America at
Nor in the ruder parts of
‘l revivals ” and camp meetings.
America
alone.
In June, x893, at a funeral in the city of
Brooklyn,
one of the mourners having fallen into hysterical
fits, several other cases at once appeared in various parts of
the church edifice, and some of the patients were so seriously affected that they were taken to a hospital.
In still another field these exhibitions
are seen, but more
in the Tigretier
of Abyssinia we
after a mediaeval pattern:
have epidemics4of
dancing which seek and obtain miraculous cures.
Reports of similar manifestations
are also sent from missionaries from the west coast of Africa, one of whom sees in
some of them the characteristics
of cases of possession mentioned inour Gospels, and is therefore
inclined to attribute
them to Satan.?
III.
THEOLOGICAL
OF
THE
“RESTATEMENTS.‘‘-FINAL
SCIENTIFIC
VIEW
AND
TRIUMPH
METHODS.
But, happily, long before these latter occurrences,
science
had come into the field and was gradually diminishing
this
class of diseases.
Among the earlier workers to this better
purpose was the great Dutch physician
Boerhaave.
FindL’lmqination
. scsBienfaits et sex Agaremefltf surtout aans le
Paris, IS&~, liv. iv, ch. vii, § 7 : Les Posskdeks de Morzine ;
alsoConstans, Rdation SW me Epidhi~ de Hystkro-D~monopat~ie, Paris, 1863.
t For the ?ases in Brooklyn, see the New YorR Tribune of about June IO, 1893.
For the Tigretier, with especially interesting
citations, see Hecker, chap. iii, sec. I.
For the cases in western Africa, see the Rev. J. L. Wilson, Westew _4frica3 p. 217.
* See Tissot,
Dmzaine
du MemeiZleux,
.
164
FROM
DIABOLISM
TO
HYSTERIA.
ing in one of the wards in the hospital at Haarlem a number of women going into convulsions
and imitating
each
other in various acts of frenzy, he immediately ordered a furnace of blazing coals into the midst of the ward, heated cauterizing irons, and declared that he would burn the arms of
the first woman who fell into convulsions.
No more cases
occurred. ++
These and similar successful dealings of medical science
with mental disease brought
about the next stage in the
theological
development.
The Church sought to retreat,
after the usual manner, behind a compromise.
Early in the
eighteenth
century
appeared
a new edition of the great
work by the Jesuit Delrio which for a hundred years had
been a text-book for the use of ecclesiastics
in fighting witchcraft; but in this edition the part played by Satan in diseases was changed : it was suggested
that, while diseases
have natural causes, it is necessary
that Satan enter the
human body in order to make these causes effective.
This
work claims that Satan “attacks
lunatics at the full moon,
when their b?ains are full of humours”;
that in other cases
of illness he “ stirs the black bile “; and that in cases of
blindness and deafness he “clogs
the eyes and ears.”
By
the close of the century this “ restatement ” was evidently
found untenable,
and one of a very different sort was attempted in England.
In the third edition of the EncycZo~a&z Britannica, published in 1797, under the article Dczmoniacs, the orthodox
view was presented in the following words : “ The reality of
demoniacal possession stands upon the same evidence with
the gospel system in general.”
This statement, though necessary to satisfy the older theological sentiment, was clearly found too dangerous to be sent
out into the modern sceptical world without some qualification.
Another
view was therefore
suggested, namely, that
the personages of the New Testament
“adopted
the vulgar
language in speaking of those unfortunate persons who were
generally imagined to be possessed with demons.”
Two or
three editions contained this curious compromise ; but near
* See Figuier,
Histoire
du Merveilleux,
WI. i, p, 403.
THEOLOGICAL
SUGGESTIONS
OF
COMPROMISE.
165
the middle of the present century the whole discussion was
quietly dropped.
Science, declining to trouble itself with any of these views,
pressed on, and toward the end of the century we see Dr.
Rhodes at Lyons curing a very serious case of possession
by the use of a powerful emetic;
yet myth-making
came in
here also, and it was stated that when the emetic produced
its effect people had seen multitudes
of green and yellow
devils cast forth from the mouth of the possessed.
The last great demonstration
of the old belief in England
was made in 1785. Near the city of Bristol at that time lived
a drunken epileptic, George
Lukins.
In asking alms, he insisted that he was “possessed,”
and proved it by jumping,
screaming, barking, and treating
the company to a parody
of the Te Deunz.
He was solemnly brought into the Temple Church, and
seven clergymen
united in the effort to exorcise
the evil
spirit.
Upon their adjuring
Satan, he swore “by his infernal den ” that he would not come out of the man-“ an
oath,” says the chronicler,
“nowhere
to be found but in
Bunyan’s
Pz’Zgnbz’s Progress, from which Lukins
probably
got it.”
But the seven clergymen
were at last successful,
and
seven devils were cast out, after which Lukins retired, and
appears to have been supported during the remainder of his
life as a monument of mercy.
With this great effort the old theory in England seemed
practically
exhausted.
Science
had evidently carried the stronghold.
In 1S76,
at a little town near Amiens, in France, a young woman suffering with all the usual evidences of diabolic possession was
brought to the priest.
The priest was besought to cast out
the devil, but he simply took her to the hospital, where,
under scientific treatment,
she rapidly became better.*
The final triumph of science in this part of the great field
has been mainly achieved durin g the latter half of the present
century.
Following
in the noble succession
of Paracelsus
and
* See Fizuier ; alsoCollin de Plancy,
Dictiomaire
I~tf~mak,
article
PossP~‘h.
166
FROM
DIABOLISM
TO HYSTERIA.
John Hunter and Pine1 and Tuke and Esquirol, have come
a band of thinkers and workers who by scientific observation
and research
have developed
new growths
of truth, ever
more and more precious.
Among the many facts thus brought to bear upon this
last stronghold
of the Prince of Darkness, may be named
especially those indicating “ expectant attention “-an espectation of phenomena dwelt upon until the longing for them’
becomes morbid and invincible,
and the creation of them
perhaps unconscious.
Still other classes of phenomena leading to epidemics are found to arise from a morbid tendency
to imitation.
Still other groups have been brought under
hypnotism.
Multitudes
more have been found under the
innumerable
forms and results of hysteria.
A study of the
effects of the imagination
upon bodily functions
has also,
yielded remarkable
results.
And, finally, to supplement
this work, have come in an
array of scholars in history and literature who have investigated myth-making
and wonder-mongering.
Thus has been cleared away that cloud of supernaturalism which so long hung over mental diseases, and thus have
they been brought within the firm grasp of science.*
* To go even into leading citations in this vast and beneficent
literature would
take me far beyond my plan and space, but I may name, among easily accessible
authorities,
Brierre de Boismont on UaZZucinations,
Huh&s
translation,
1860 ;
also James Braid, 2% Power of the Mind OZIW the Body, London,
1846 ; KrafftEbing, LeAuburh a’er Psycf%Wie, Stuttgart,
1588 ; Take, ZnJ%ence of f/ze Mi,td on
Pathdogy
of the Mind, London,
1879; Carthe Rody, London, 1884 ; Maudsley,
1888; Lloyd Tuckey, Fait/z
penter, Mental PhysioZqy,
sixth edition, London,
Cure, in the Nineteenth Century for December, 1888 ; Pettigrew,
Su$evstitionr connected with the Practice of Meh’ne
and .Sur,ery, London, 1844 ; Snell, ZZexen$mcease und Geis#esst&-zuzg, Miinchen, 1891. For a very valuable study of interesting
cases, see The Law of I;ypnotism,
by Prof. R. S. Hyer, of the Southwestern
University, Georgetown,
Texas, 1895.
As to myth-making
and wonder-mongering,
the general reader will find interesting supplementary
accounts in the recent works of Andrew Lang and BaringGould.
A very curious evidence of the effects of the myth-making
tendency has recently
come to the attention
of the writer of this article.
Periodically,
for many years
past, we have seen, in books of travel and in the newspapers,
accounts of the wonderful performances
of the jugglers in India : of the stabbing of a child in a small
basket in the midst of an arena, and the child appearing
alive in the surrounding
crowd ; of seeds planted, sprouted, and becoming well-grown
trees under the hand
THEOLOGICAL
SUGGESTIONS
OF
COMPROMISE.
167
Conscientious
men still linger on who find comfort in
holding fast to some shred of the old belief in diabolic possession.
The sturdy declaration
in the last century by John
Wesley, that “giving up witchcraft
is giving up the Bible,”
is echoed feebly in the latter half of this century by the eminent Catholic
ecclesiastic
in France who declares that “ to
deny possession by devils is to charge Jesus and his apostles
of
with imposture,”
and asks, “ How can the testimony
apostles, fathers of the Church, and saints who saw the possessed and so declared,
be denied I”
And a still fainter
echo lingers in Protestant
England.%
But, despite this conscientious
opposition, science has in
these latter days steadily wrought hand in hand with Christian charity in this field, to evolve a better future for humanity.
The thoughtful physician and the devoted clergyman
are now constantly seen working together;
and it is not too
much to expect that Satan, having been cast out of the insane asylums, will ere long disappear from monasteries
and
camp meetings, even in the most unenlightened
regions of
Christendom.
of the juggler ; of ropes thrown into the air and sustained by invisible force. Count
de Gubernatis,
the eminent professor and Oriental scholar at Florence, informed
the present writer that he had recently seen and studied these exhibitions, and that,
so far from being wonderful, they were much inferior to the jugglery so well known
in all our Western capitals.
* See the AbbC Barthelemi, in the Dictionmire de Za Conversatiion ; also the Rev.
W. Scott’s Doctrine of Evil Spirits proved, London, 1853 ; also the vigorous protest of Dean Burgon against the action of the New Testament
revisers, in substi” for “ lunatic ” in Matthew xvii, 15, published
in the
tuting the word “epileptic
Quarterly Review for January, I%%!.
CHAPTER
FROM
BABEL
I. THE
TO
SACRED
XVII.
COMPARATIVX
THEORY
PHI_LOLOGY.
IN ITS FIRST
FORM.
AMONG
the sciences
which
have served as entering
wedges into the heavy mass of ecclesiastical
orthodoxy-to
cleave it, disintegrate
it, and let the light of Christianity
into
it-none
perhaps has done a more striking work than Comparative Philology.
In one very important
respect the history of this science differs from that of any other; for it is
the only one whose conclusions theologians
have at last fully
adopted as the result of their own studies.
This adoption
teaches a great lesson, since, while it has destroyed
theological views cherished during many centuries, and obliged
the Church to accept theories directly contrary to the plain
letter of our sacred books, the result is clearly seen to have
helped Christianity
rather than to have hurt it. It has certainly done much to clear our religious foundations
of the
dogmatic rust which was eating into their structure.
How this result was reached, and why the Church has
so fully accepted it, I shall endeavour to show in the present
chapter.
At a very early period in the evolution of civilization
men began to ask questions
regarding
language;
and the
answers to these questions were naturally embodied in the
myths, legends, and chronicles of their sacred books.
Among
the foremost
of these questions
were three:
ii Whence
came language?”
“ Which
was the first lanof language?”
guage ? ” “ How came the diversity
The answer to the first of these was very simple: each
people naturally held that language was given it directly or
indirectly by some special or national deity of its own; thus,
16s
THE
SACRED
THEORY
IN
ITS FIRST
FORM.
169
to the Chaldeans
by Oannes, to the Egyptians
by Thoth, to
the Hebrews by Jahveh.
The Hebrew
answer is embodied
in the great poem
which opens our sacred
books.
Jahveh talks with Adam
and is perfectly understood ; the serpent talks with Eve and
is perfectly understood ; Jahveh
brings the animals before
Language, then, was
Adam, who bestows on each its name.
Of the fact that every language
God-given
and complete.
is the result of a growth process there was evidently, among
the compilers of our sacred books, no suspicion.
The answer to the second of these questions was no less
simple.
As, very generally,
each nation believed its own
each believed
chief divinity to be “ a god above all gods,“-as
as each believed
its own sacred
itself “a chosen people,“city the actual centre of the earth, so each believed its own
language to be the first- the original of all. This answer was
from the first taken for granted by each “chosen
people,”
and especially by the Hebrews:
throughout
their whole history, whether the Almighty talks with Adam in the Garden
or writes the commandments
on Mount Sinai, he uses the
same language-the
Hebrew.
The answer to the third of these questions, that regarding the diversity
of languages,
was much more difficult.
Naturally, explanations of this diversity frequently gave rise
to legends somewhat complicated.
The “ law of wills and causes,” formulated by Comte, was
exemplified
here as in so many other cases.
That law is,
that, when men do not know the natural causes of things,
they simply attribute them to wills like their own ; thus they
obtain a theory which provisionally
takes the place of science, and this theory forms a basis for theology.
Examples of this recur to any thinking reader of history.
Before the simpler laws of astronomy were known, the sun
was supposed to be trundled out into the heavens every day
and the stars hung up in the firmament every night by the
right hand of the Almighty.
Before the laws of comets were
known, they were thought to be missiles hurled by an angry
Before the real cause of lightning
God at a wicked world.
was known, it was supposed to be the work of a good God
in his wrath, or of evil spirits in their malice.
Before the
170
FROM
BABEL
TO
COMPARATIVE
PHILOLOGY.
laws of meteorology
were known, it was thought that rains
were caused by the Almighty
or his angels opening ‘<the
windows of heaven ” to let down upon the earth “ the waters
that be above the firmament.”
Before the laws governing
physical health were known, diseases were supposed to result from the direct interposition
of the Almighty or of Satan,
Before the laws governing
mental health were known, insanity was generally
thought to be diabolic
possession.
All
these early conceptions
were naturally embodied in the sacred books of the world, and especially in our own.*
So, in this case, to account for the diversity of tongues,
the direct intervention
of the Divine Will was brought in.
As this diversity was felt to be an inconvenience,
it was attributed to the will of a Divine Being in anger.
To explain
this anger, it was held that it must have been provoked by
human sin.
Out of this conception
explanatory
myths and legends
grew as thickly and naturally as elms along water-courses;
of these the earliest form known to us is found in the Chaldean accounts, and nowhere more clearly than in the legend
of the Tower of Babel.
The inscriptions
recently found among the ruins of Assyria have thrown a bright light into this and other scriptural
the deciphering
of the characters
in
myths and legends:
these inscriptions
by Grotefend,
and the reading of the texts
by George Smith, Oppert, Sayce, and others, have given us
these traditions more nearly in their original form than they
appear in our own Scriptures.
The Hebrew story of Babel, like SO many other legends
in the sacred books of the world, combined various elements.
By a play upon words, such as the history of myths and
legends frequently shows, it wrought into one fabric the earlier explanations of the diversities
of human speech and of
the great ruined tower at Babylon.
The name Babel (bab-d)
means “ Gate of God ” or “ Gate of the Gods.”
All modern
scholars of note agree that this was the real significance
of
* Any one who wishes to realize the medieval view of the direct personal attention of the Almighty to the universe, can perhaps do so most easily by looking over
the engravings
in the well-known Nuremberg CltronicZe, representing
him in the
work of each of the six days, and resting afterward.
_
THE
SACRED
THEORY
IN
ITS
FIRST
FORM.
171
the name; but the Hebrew verb which signifies to confound
resembles somewhat the word Babel, so that out of this resemblance, by one of the most common processes
in myth
formation, came to the Hebrew mind an indisputable
proof
that the tower was connected with the confusion,of
tongues,
and this became part of our theological
heritage,
In our sacred books the account runs as follows:
“ And the whole earth was of one language, and of one
speech.
“And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east,
that they found a plain in the land of Shinar ; and they dwelt
there.
it And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick,
And they had brick for stone,
and burn them thoroughly.
and slime had they for mortar.
ii And they said, Go to, let us build us a city, and a tower,
whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a
name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole
earth.
“And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower,
which the children of men builded.
“And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they
and this they begin to do: and now
have all one language;
nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.
“ Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.
“ So the Lord scattered
them abroad from thence upon
the face of all the earth : and they left off to build the city.
“ Therefore
is the name of it called Babel;
because the
Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and
from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face
(Genesis xi, 1-g.)
of all the earth.”
Thus far the legend had been but slightly changed from
the earlier Chaldean form in which it has been found in the
Assyrian
inscriptions.
Its character is very simple: to use
the words of Prof. Sayce, “ It takes us back to the age when
the gods were believed to dwell in the visible sky, and when
man, therefore, did his best to rear his altars as near them
And this eminent divine might have added
as possible.”
I72
FROM
BABEL
TO
COMPARATIVE
PHILOLOGY.
that it takes us back also to a time when it was thought that
Jehovah, in order to see the tower fully, was obliged to come
down from his seat above the firmament.
As to the real reasons for the building of the towers
which formed so striking a feature in Chaldean architecture
-any
one of which may easily have given rise to the explanatory myth which found its way into our sacred booksthere seems a substantial
agreement
among leading scholars
that they were erected primarily
as parts of temples, but
largely
for the purpose
of astronomical
observations,
to
which the Chaldeans were so devoted, and to which their
country, with its level surface and clear atmosphere,
was so
As to the real cause of the ruin of such strucwell adapted.
tures, one of the inscribed
cylinders
discovered
in recent
times, speaking of a tower which most of the archaeologists
identify with the Tower of Babel, reads as follows:
“The building named the Stages of the Seven Spheres,
which was the Tower of Borsippa, had been built by a former king.
He had completed forty-two
cubits, but he did
During the lapse of time, it had become
not finish its head.
ruined; they had not taken care of the exit of the waters, so
that rain and wet had penetrated
into the brickwork;
the
casing of burned brick had swollen out, and the terraces of
crude brick are scattered in heaps.”
We can well understand
how easily “the gods, assisted
by the winds,” as stated in the Chaldean legend, could overthrow a tower thus built.
It may be instructive
to compare with the explanatory
myth developed first by the Chaldeans, and in a slightly different form by the Hebrews,
various other legends to explain the same diversity of tongues.
The Hindu legend of
the confusion of tongues is as follows :
“There
grew in the centre of the earth the wonderful
It was so tall that it
tree.’
‘ world tree,’ or ‘ knowledge
It said in its heart, ‘ I shall hold
reached almost to heaven.
my head in heaven and spread my branches
over all the
earth, and gather all men together
under my shadow, and
protect
them, and prevent
them from separating.’
But
Brahma, to punish the pride of the tree, cut off its branches
and cast them down on the earth, when they sprang up as
THE
SACRED
THEORY
IN
ITS
FIRST
FORM.
I73
wata trees, and made differences
of belief and speech and
customs to prevail on the earth, to disperse men upon its
surface.”
Still more striking
is a Mexican legend:
according
to
this, the giant Xelhua built the great Pyramid of Cholula, in
order to reach heaven, until the gods, angry at his audacity,
threw fire upon the building and broke it down, whereupon
every separate family received a language of its own.
Such explanatory
myths grew or spread widely over the
A well-known
form of the legend, more like the
earth.
Chaldean than the Hebrew later form, appeared among the
Greeks.
According
to this, the Aloidae piled Mount Ossa
upon Olympus and Pelion upon Ossa, in their efforts to
reach heaven and dethrone Jupiter.
Still another form of it entered the thoughts
of Plato.
He held that in the golden age men and beasts all spoke the
but that Zeus confounded
their
speech
same language,
because men were proud and demanded eternal youth and
immortality.*
* For
the ruins
the identification
of the Tower of Babel with the “Birs Nimrud ” amid
of the city of Borsippa, see Rawlinson;
also Schrader,
The Cuneiform
1885, pp. 106-112 and following;
Inscriptions
and the OZd Testament, London,
For some of these
and especially George Smith, Assyrian
Discoveries,
p. 59.
inscriptions
discovered
and read by George Smith, see his C!&z’eun Account of
For the statement regarding
the origin of
Genesis, New York, 1876, pp. 160-162.
the word Babel, see Ersch and Gruber, article BabyZoon ; also the Rev. Prof. A. H.
Sayce, in the latest edition of the EncycZopudia Britannica
; also Colenso, Pentateuch Enamined,
part iv, p. 302 ; also John Fiske, Myths and Myth-makers,
p. 72 ;
also Lenormant,
Hi&ire Axcienne de Z’Otient, Paris, 1881, vol. i, pp. 115 et seq.
As to the character
and purpose of the great tower of the Temple of Belus, see
Smith’s Bible Dictionary,
article Babe& quoting Diodorus ; also Rawlinson,
especially in Jozrrnal of the Asiatic Society for 1861 ; also Sayce, Religion of the Anciest BabyZooninrzs (Hibbert
Lectures for 1887), London,
1877, chap. ii and elsewhere, especially pp. 96, 397, 407 ; also Max Duncker, History of d*zti&y, Abbott’s translation,
vol. ii, chaps. ii and iii. For similar legends in other parts of the
world, see Delitzsch ; also Humboldt,
American Researches ; also Brinton, Myths
of the New WorZd; also Colenso, as above.
The Tower of Cholula is well known,
having been described by Humboldt
and Lord Kingsborough.
For superb engravings showing the view of Babel as developed by the theological
imagination,
see
Kircher, Turk
Babel, Amsterdam,
1679. For the Law of Wills and Causes, with
deductions from it well stated, see Beattie Crazier, CiviZization and Progress, London, 1888, pp. 112, 178, 179, 273. For Plato, see the PoZiticus, p. 272, ed. Stephani,
cited in Ersch and Gruber, article Babylon.
For a good general statement, see
Bibk Myths, New York, 1583, chap. iii.
For Aristotle’s strange want of interest in
I74
FROM
BABEL
TO
COMPARATIVE
PHILOLOGY.
But naturally the version of the legend which most affected Christendom
was that modification
of the Chaldean
form developed
among the Jews
and embodied
in their
sacred books.
To a thinking man in these days it is very
instructive.
The coming down of the Almighty from heaven
to see the tower and put an end to it by dispersing its build.
ers, points to the time when his dwelling was supposed to be
just above the firmament or solid vault above the earth : the
time when he exercised
his beneficent
activity in such acts
as opening “the windows of heaven”
to give down rain
upon the earth; in bringing out the sun every day and hanging up the stars every night to give light to the earth ; in
hurling comets, to give warning;
in placing his bow in the
cloud, to give hope ; in coming down in the cool of the evening to walk and talk with the man he had made; in making
coats of skins for Adam and Eve; in enjoying the odour of
flesh which Noah burned for him ; in eating with Abraham
under the oaks of Mamre ; in wrestling with Jacob;
and in
writing with his own finger on the stone tables for Moses.
So came the answer to the third question regarding
language ; and all three answers, embodied in our sacred books
and implanted in the Jewish mind, supplied to the Christian
Church the germs of a theological development of philology.
These germs developed
rapidly in the warm atmosphere
of devotion
and ignorance
of natural law which pervaded
the early Church, and there grew a great orthodox
theory
of language, which was held throughout
Christendom,
“always, everywhere,
and by all,” for nearly two thousand years,
and to which, until the present century, all science has been
obliged, under pains and penalties, to conform.
There did, indeed, come into human thought at an early
period some suggestions
of the modern scientific view of
philology.
Lucretius had proposed a theory, inadequate indeed, but still pointing toward the truth, as follows:
“ Nature impelled man to try the various
sounds of the tongue,
and so struck out the names of things, much in the same way
as the inability to speak is seen in its turn to drive children
any ckmification of the varieties of human speech, see Max Miiller, Lectures m tire
Science ofLangua,rre, London, 1864, series i, chap. iv, pp. x%3-125.
.
THE
SACRED
THEORY
IN ITS
FIRST
FORM.
I75
But, among the early fathers of the
to the use of gestures.”
Church, the only one who seems to have caught an echo of
this utterance was St. Gregory
of Nyssa: as a rule, all the
other great founders of Christian theology? as far as they expressed themselves
on the subject, took the view that the
original language spoken by the Almighty and given by him
to men was Hebrew, and that from this all other languages
were derived at the destruction
of the Tower of Babel.
This doctrine was especially upheld by Origen, St. Jerome,
Origen taught that ‘( the language given
and St. Augustine.
at the first through Adam, the Hebrew,
remained among
that portion of mankind which was assigned not to any angel, but continued the portion of God himself.”
St. Augustine declared
that, when the other races were divided by
their own peculiar languages, Heber’s family preserved that
language which is not unreasonably
believed to have been
the common language of the race, and that on this account
it was henceforth
called Hebrew.
St. Jerome wrote, “The
whole of antiquity
affirms that Hebrew, in which the Old
Testament
is written,
was the beginning
of all human
speech.”
Amid such great authorities
as these even Gregory
of
Nyssa struggled in vain.
He seems to have taken the matter very earnestly, and to have used not only argument but
He insists that God does not speak Hebrew, and
ridicule.
that the tongue used by Moses was not even a pure dialect
of one of the languages resulting from “ the confusion.”
He
makes man the inventor of speech, and resorts to raillery :
speaking against his opponent Eunomius, he says that, “ passing in silence his base and abject garrulity,”
he will I‘ note a
few things which are thrown into the midst of his useless or
wordy discourse, where he represents God teaching words
and names to our first parents, sitting before them like some
pedagogue or grammar
master.”
But, naturally,’ the great
authority
of Origen, Jerome, and Augustine
prevailed ; the
view suggested
by Lucretius, and again by St. Gregory of
Nyssa, died out ; and “ always, everywhere,
and by all,” in
the Church, the doctrine
was received
that the language
spoken by the Almighty
was Hebrew,-that
it was taught
by him to Adam,-and
that all other languages on the face
_
176
FROM
BABEL
TO
COMPARATIVE
PHILOLOGY.
attending
of the earth originated from it at the dispersion
the destruction
of the Tower of Babel.*
This idea threw out roots and branches in every direcAs
tion, and so developed ever into new and strong forms.
all scholars now know, the vowel points in the Hebrew language were not adopted until at some period between the
second and tenth centuries;
but in the mediaeval Church
they soon came to be considered as part of the great miracle
-as the work of the right hand of the Almighty;
and never
until the eighteenth
century was there any doubt allowed as
to the divine origin of these rabbinical additions to the text.
To hesitate in believing that these points were dotted virtually by the very hand of God himself came to be considered
a fearful heresy.
The series of battles between theology and science in the
field of comparative
philology
opened just on this point,
of
apparently so insignificant : the direct divine inspiration
The first to impugn this divine
the rabbinical punctuation.
origin of these vocal points and accents appears to have been
a Spanish monk, Raymundus
Martinus, in his Pugio Fidei, or
Poniard of the Faith, which he put forth in the thirteenth
century.
But he and his doctrine disappeared
beneath the
waves of the orthodox
ocean, and apparently left no trace.
For nearly three hundred years longer the full sacred theory
held its ground ; but about the opening of the sixteenth century another glimpse of the truth was given by a Jew, Elias
Levita, and this seems to have had some little effect, at least
in keeping the germ of scientific truth alive.
The Reformation,
with its renewal of the literal study of
* For Lucretius’s statement, see the De Z&rum Natura, lib. v, Munro’s edition,
with translation,
Cambridge,
1886, vol. iii, p. 141. For the opinion of Gregory of
Nyssa, see Benfey, Gesrhichte der .~prachwis~enschaft in Deutschhzd, Miinchen,
1869, p. 179 ; and for the passage cited, see Gregory of Nyssa in his Contra EunoFor St. Jerome, see his EpistZe
mium, xii, in Migne’s P&r. Gmca, vol. ii, p. ~43.
For citation from St. Augustine,
X Z’IZI, in Migne’s Patr. Lat., vol. xxii, p. 365.
see the City of God, Dods’s translation,
Edinburgh,
1871, vol. ii, p. 122. For citation from Origen, see his Horni& X1, cited by Guichard in preface to L’Harmonie
convincing proofs that
&~moZqipue, Paris, 1631, lib. xvi, chap. xi. For absolutely
the Jews derived the Babel and other legends of their sacred books from the Chaldeans, see George Smith, C!zaZdean Accountof Genesis, passim ; but especially for
a most candid though evidently somewhat reluctant summing up, see p. 291.
THE
/
I
f
j
SACRED
THEORY
IN
ITS
FIRST
FORM.
‘77
the Scriptures,
and its transfer of a& infallibility
from the
Church and the papacy to the letter of the sacred books,
intensified
for a time the devotion of Christendom
to this
sacred theory of language.
The belief was strongly
held
that the writers of the Bible were merely pens in the hand
of God (DPz’ cnlnmi) ; hence the conclusion that not only the
sense but the words, letters, and even the punctuation
proceeded from the Holy Spirit.
Only on this one question of
the origin of the Hebrew points was there any controversy,
and this waxed hot.
It began to be especially noted that
these vowel points in the Hebrew Bible did not exist in the
in the Talmud,
and
synagogue
rolls, were not mentioned
seemed unknown to St. Jerome;
and on these grounds some
earnest men ventured to think them no part of the original
revelation to Adam.
Zwingli, so much before most of the
Reformers
in other respects, was equally so in this.
While
not doubting
the divine origin and preservation
of the
Hebrew language
as a whole, he denied the antiquity
of
the vocal points, demonstrated
their unessential
character,
and pointed out the fact that St. Jerome
makes no mention
of them.
His denial was long the refuge of those who
shared this heresy.
But the full orthodox theory remained established
among
the vast majority
both of Catholics
and Protestants.
The
attitude of the former is well illustrated
in the imposing
work of the canon Marini, which appeared at Venice in 1593,
under the title of No&z’s Ark:
A New Treasury of the Sacred
Tongue.
The huge folios begin with the declaration
that the
Hebrew tongue was “divinely
inspired at the very beginning of the world,” and the doctrine is steadily maintained
that this divine inspiration
extended not only to the letters
but to the punctuation.
Not before the seventeenth
century was well under way
do we find a thorough scholar bold enough to gainsay this
preposterous
doctrine.
This new assailant
was Capellus,
Professor of Hebrew at Saumur;
but he dared not put forth
his argument
in France:
he was obliged to publish it in
Holland, and even there such obstacles were thrown in his
way that it was ten years before he published
another
treatise of importance.
40
1’78
FROM
BABEL
TO
COMPARATIVE
PHILOLOGY.
The work of Capellus was received as settling the question by very many open-minded scholars, among whom was
But many theologians
felt this view to be a
Hugo Grotius.
blow at the sanctity and integrity of the sacred text; and in
1648 the great scholar, John Buxtorf
the younger, rose to
defend the orthodox
citadel:
in his Anticritica
he brought
all his stores of knowledge
to uphold the doctrine that the
rabbinical points and accents had been jotted down by the
right hand of God.
The controversy
waxed hot: scholars like Voss and Brian
Walton supported Capellus ; Wasmuth
and many others of
note were as fierce against him. The Swiss Protestants were
especially violent on the orthodox
side; their formula consensus of 1675 declared the vowel points to be inspired, and
three years later the Calvinists of Geneva, by a special canon,
forbade that any minister should be received into their jurisdiction until he publicly confessed that the Hebrew text, as
it to-day exists in the Masoretic
copies, is, both as to the
consonants and vowel points, divine and authentic.
While in Holland so great a man as Hugo Grotius supported the view of Capellus, and while in France the eminent
Catholic scholar Richard
Simon, and many others, Catholic
and Protestant,
took similar ground against this divine origin
of the Hebrew punctuation, there was arrayed against them
a body apparently
overwhelming.
In France, Bossuet, the
greatest theologian that France has ever produced, did his
In Germany, Wasmuth, professor first
best to crush Simon.
at Restock and afterward at Kiel, hurled his Yindic~~ at the
Yet at this very moment the battle was clearly
innovators.
of Capellus were irrefragable,
and, dewon ; the arguments
spite the commands of bishops, the outcries of theologians,
and the sneering of critics, his application
of strictly scientific observation
and reasoning carried the day.
Yet a casual observer, long after the fate of the battle
was really settled, might have supposed that it was still in
doubt.
As is not unusual in theologic controversies,
attempts
were made to galvanize the dead doctrine into an appearFamous among these attempts was that made
ance of life.
as late as the beginning
of the eighteenth
century by two
Bremen theologians, Hase and Iken.
They put forth a com-
SACRED
THEORY
OF
LANGUAGE
IN
ITS
SECOND
FORM.
179
pilation in two huge folios simultaneously
at Leyden and
Amsterdam,
prominent in which work is the treatise on The
htegrity
of Scrz$ture,
by Johann Andreas Danzius; Professor
of Oriental
Languages
and Senior
Member of the Philosophical Faculty
of Jena, and, to preface it, there was a
formal and fulsome approval by three eminent professors
of
With great fervour the author pointed
theology at Leyden.
out that “ religion itself depends absolutely on the infallible
inspiration,
both verbal and literal, of the Scripture
text ” ;
and with impassioned eloquence he assailed the blasphemers
who dared question the divine origin of the Hebrew points.
That the case was
But this was really the last great effort.
lost was seen by the fact that Danzius felt obliged to use
other missiles than arguments,
and especially
to call his
opponents
hard names.
From this period the old sacred
theory as to the origin of the Hebrew points may be considered as dead and buried.
II.
THE
SACRED
THEORY
OF
LANGUAGE
IN
ITS
SECOND
FORM.
But the war was soon to be waged on a wider and far
The inspiration of the Hebrew puncmore important field.
tuation having been given up, the great orthodox
body fell
back upon the remainder of the theory, and intrenched
this
more strongly than ever: the theory that the Hebrew language was the first of all languages-that
which was spoken
by the Almighty, given by him to Adam, transmitted through
Noah to the world after the Deluge-and
that the” confusion
of tongues ” was the origin of all other languages.
In giving account of this new phase of the struggle, it is
well to go back a little.
From the Revival of Learning and
the Reformation
had come the renewed study of Hebrew in
the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries,
and thus the sacred
doctrine regardin g the origin of the Hebrew language received additional
authority.
All the early Hebrew grammars, from that of Reuchlin
down, assert the divine origin
and miraculous
claims of Hebrew.
It is constantly
mentioned as “ the sacred
In 1506,
tongue “-sancta
&pa.
Reuchlin, though himself persecuted
by a large faction in
180
FROM
BABEL
TO COMPARATIVE
PHILOLOGY.
the Church
for advanced
views, refers
to Hebrew
as
“spoken by the mouth of God.”
This idea was popularized by the edition of the Margarita
Philoqdica,
published at Strasburg
in 1508.
That work, in
its successive editions a mirror of human knowledge
at the
close of the Middle Ages and the opening of modern times,
contains a curious introduction
to the study of Hebrew.
In
this it is declared
that Hebrew
was the original
speech
“used between God and man and between men and angels.”
Its full-page frontispiece
represents
Moses receiving
from
God the tables of stone written in Hebrew ; and, as a conit reminds
us that Christ himself, by
clusive argument,
choosing a Hebrew
maid for his mother, made that his
mother tongue.
It must be noted here, however, that Luther, in one of
those outbursts of strong sense which so often appear in his
career, enforced the explanation that the words “ God said ”
had nothing to do with the articulation
of human language.
Still, he evidently
yielded
to the general
view.
In the
Roman Church at the same period we have a typical example of the theologic
method applied to philology, as we
have seen it applied to other sciences, in the statement
by
Luther’s great opponent, Cajetan, that the three languages
of the inscription
on the cross of Calvary “ were the representatives of all languages, because the number three denotes
perfection.”
In 1538 Postillus made a very important
endeavour
at a
comparative
study of languages, but with the orthodox assumption that all were derived from one source, namely, the
Naturally,
Comparative
Philology blundered and
Hebrew.
stumbled along this path into endless absurdities.
The most
amazing efforts were made to trace back everything
to the
English and Latin dictionaries
appeared,
sacred language.
in which every word was traced back to a Hebrew
root.
No supposition
was too absurd in this attempt to square
It was declared
that, as Hebrew
Science with Scripture.
is written from right to left, it might be read either way, in
order to produce a satisfactory etymology.
The whole effort
in all this sacred scholarship
was, not to find what the truth
is-not
to see how the various languages are to be classified,
SACRED
THEORY
OF
LANGUAGE
IN
ITS
SECOND
FORM.
18 I
or from what source they are really derived-but
to demonstrate what was supposed necessary to maintain what was
then held to be the truth of Scripture;
namely, that all languages are derived from the Hebrew.
This stumbling and blundering,
under the sway of orthodox necessity, was seen among the foremost scholars throughout Europe.
About the middle of the sixteenth century the
great Swiss scholar, Conrad Gesner, beginning his Mithidates,
says, “ While of all languages Hebrew is the first and oldest,
of all is alone pure and unmixed, all the rest are much mixed,
for there is none which has not some words derived and corrupted from Hebrew.”
Typical, as we approach
the end of the sixteenth
century, are the utterances
of two of the most noted English
divines.
First of these may be mentioned Dr. William Fulke,
Master of Pembroke Hall, in the University
of Cambridge.
In his Discovery of the Dangerous Rock of the Row&z Chock,
published in 1580, he speaks of “the Hebrew tongue, . . .
the first tongue of the world, and for the excellency
thereof
called ‘ the holy tongue.’ ”
Yet more emphatic, eight years later, was another eminent divine, Dr. William Whitaker,
Regius Professor of DiIn his
vinity and Master of St. John’s College at Cambridge.
Disputation on HoZy Scyz$tuye, first printed in 1gX8, he says :
“ The Hebrew is the most ancient of all languages, and was
that which alone prevailed in the world before the Deluge
and the erection
of the Tower of Babel.
For it was this
which Adam used and all men before the Flood, as is manifest from the Scriptures,
as the fathers testify.”
He then
proceeds to quote passages on this subject from St. Jerome,
St. Augustine,
and others, and cites St. Chrysostom
in support of the statement that “God himself showed the model
and method of writing when he delivered the Law written
by his own finger to Moses.” *
* For the whole scriptural argument, embracing the various texts on which the
sacred science of Philology was founded, with the use made of such texts, see Benfey, GescRicRte a’er Sprackwissensckaft
in Deutsckhnd,
Miinchen, 1869, pp. 22-26.
As to the origin of the vowel points, see Benfey, as above : he holds that they began to be inserted in the second century A. D., and that the process lasted until
about the tenth. For Raymundus
and his Pugio I;idei, see G. L. Bauer, Prolegonrena
FROM
I82
BABEL
TO
COMPARATIVE
PHILOLOGY,
This sacred theory entered the seventeenth
century in
full force, and for a time swept everything
before it. Eminent commentators,
Catholic
and Protestant,
accepted
and
developed it. Great prelates, Catholic and Protestant, stood
guard over it, favouring those who supported it, doing their
best to destroy those who would modify it.
In 1606 Stephen
Guichard
built new buttresses
for it in
Catholic France.
He explains in his preface that his intention is “to make the reader see in the Hebrew word not
to his
14, in
iii).
revision
tome
of Glassius’s
ii of the work.
See also
Morinus,
PhiZoZogia Sacra, Leipsic,
For Zwingli, see Praef.
De Lingua
primeva,
I795,-see
especiallypp. sin ApoZ. romp. Isaie (Opera,
p. 447.
For
Marini,
see his ~rca
I
iVoe :
Thesaurus
Lingmz
general
account
of Capellus,
1
pp. 8-14.
His Arcanunr Premetationis
RmeZatum was brought out at Leyden in
1624 ; his Critica Sacra ten years later.
See on Capellus and Swiss theologues,
Wolfius, Bi6Ziotheca Nebr., tome ii, p. 27.
For the struggle,
see Schnedermann,
1
Die
j
Contmvem
in article
Sanctcz, Venet.,
1593, and especially
the preface.
For
see G. L. Bauer, in his Prolegomena,
as above, vol. ii,
des Ludovicus
Hebrew,
CapeZZus mit den Buxtorfen,
in EncycZopopredia Britannica.
Sanda
Hebraice
preface
to his Rudimenta
Scriptum,
Restock,
Hebraica,
Leipsic,
1879,
cited
For Wasmuth,
see his Vim?‘&
For Reuchlin,
see the dedicatory
1664.
1506, folio, in which he speaks of the
The statement
in
“ in divina scriptura dicendi genus, quale OS Dei locutum est.”
the Margarita
PkiZoosophica as to Hebrew is doubtless based on Reuchlin’s
Rua’i-
1
1
I
Pforzheim,
It is significant
menta Hebraica, which it quotes, and which first appeared in 1506.
that this section disappeared
from the Margarita
in the following editions ; but
I
I
.
this disappearance
is easily understood when we recall the fact that Gregory Reysch,
its author, having become one of the Papal Commission
to judge Reuchlin
in his
quarrel
with the Dominicans,
fore, doubtless,
considered
thought
it prudent
it wise to suppress
to side with the latter,
all evidence
and there-
of Reuchlin’s
influence
upon his beliefs.
All the other editions of the Margnrifa
in my possession are content with teaching, under the head of the Alphabet, that the Hebrew letters were
invented
guage
by Adam.
and Languages.
On Luther’s view of the words “ God said,” see Farrar,
For a most valuable statement
regarding the clashing
Lanopin-
ions at the Reformation,
see Max Miiller, as above, lecture iv, p. 132.
For the
prevailing view among the Reformers,
see Calovius, vol. i, p. 484, and Tholuck,
The
Both Miiller and BenDoctrine ofInspiration,
in TheoZog. Essays, Boston, 1867.
fey note, as especially important,
ancient heathen
view regarding
p. 127, and Benfey,
as above,
the difference
“barbarians.”
pp. 170 et seg.
printed at an early period, see Benfey, p. 569.
back to Hebrew roots, see Sayce, Introdzrct+n
between
the Church view and the
See Mtiller, as above, lecture iv,
For
a very remarkable
On the attempts
list of Bibles
to trace all words
to the Science of Language,
chap.
For
vi. For Gesner, see his Mithridates
(de di’rentiis
linguarum),
Zurich, 1555.
a similar attempt to prove that Italian was also derived from Hebrew, see GiamFor Fulke, see the Parker
Society’s PdZicabullari, cited in Garlanda, p. 174.
dons, 1848,
p. 224.
For Whitaker,
same series, pp. 112-114.
see his Dispufation
olt Ho& Scripture
in the
SACRED
THEORY
OF LANGUAGE
IN
ITS SECOND
FORM.
183
only the Greek and Latin, but also the Italian, the Spanish,
the French, the German, the Flemish, the English, and many
As the merest tyro in philology
others from all languages.”
can now see, the gi-eat difficulty that Guichard
encounters
is in getting
from the Hebrew to the Aryan group of lanHow he meets this difficulty may be imagined from
guages.
of words
his statement, as follows : “As for the derivation
and inversion
of the letters, it is
by addition, subtraction,
certain that this can and-ought thus to be done, if we would
find etymologies-a
thing which becomes very credible when
we consider that the Hebrews wrote from right to left and
the Greeks and others from left to right.
All the learned
recognise such derivations as necessary ; . . . and . . . certainly otherwise
one could scarcely
trace any etymology
back to Hebrew.”
Of course, by this method of philological
juggling,
anything could be proved which the author thought necessary
to his pious purpose.
1
Two years later, Andrew Willett published at London
In this he
his Hexnpl~, or SixfoZd Commentary ujon Genesis.
insists that the one language of all mankind in the beginning
“ was the Hebrew tongue preserved still in Heber’s family.”
He also takes pains to say that the Tower of Babel “ was
not so called of Belus, as some have imagined, but of confusion, for so the Hebrew word baZaZ signifieth “; and he
quotes from St. Chrysostom
to strengthen his position.
In 1627 Dr. Constantine
I’Empereur
was inducted into
the chair of Philosophy of the Sacred Language in the University of Leyden.
In his inaugural oration on Tl’e Dignity
md Utility of the Hebrew Tongue, he puts himself on record
in favour of the Divine origin and miraculous purity of that
“ Who,” he says, “can call in question the fact
language.
that, the Hebrew idiom is coeval with the world itself, save
such as seek to win vainglory for their own sophistry?”
Two years after Willett, in England, comes the famous
Dr. Lightfoot,
the most renowned
scholar of his time in
Hebrew, Greek, and Latin ; but all his scholarship
was bent
In his Erubhin,
published
to suit theological
requirements.
in 1629, he goes to the full length of the sacred theory,
though we begin to see a curious endeavour
to get over
184
FROM
BABEL
TO
COMPARATIVE
PHILOLOGY.
some linguistic difficulties.
One passage will serve to show
both the robustness
of his faith and the acuteness of his reasoning, in view of the difficulties which scholars now began
to find in the sacred theory:
“ Other commendations
this
tongue (Hebrew) needeth none than what it hath of itself;
namely, for sanctity it was the tongue of God ; and for antiquity it was the tongue of Adam.
God the first founder,
and Adam the first speaker of it. . . . It began with the
world and the Church, and continued and increased in glory
till the captivity
in Babylon.
. . . As the man in Seneca,
that through sickness lost his memory and forgot his own
name, so the Jews, for their sins, lost their language and forgot their own tongue. . . . Before the confusion of tongues
all the world spoke their tongue and no other; but since
the confusion
of the Jews they speak the language of all
the world and not their own.”
But just at the middle of the century (1657) came in England a champion of the sacred theory more important
than
any of these-Brian
Walton, Bishop of Chester.
His Polyglot Bible dominated English scriptural criticism throughout
the remainder of the century.
He prefaces his great work
by proving at length the divine origin of Hebrew, and the
derivation from it of all other forms of speech.
He declares
it “probable
that the first parent of mankind was the inHis chapters
on this subject are full of
ventor of letters.”
He says that the Welshman, Davis, had
interesting
details.
already tried to prove the Welsh the primitive
speech;
Wormius,
the Danish ; Mitilerius,
the German;
but the
bishop stands firmly by the sacred theory, informing us that
“even in the New World are found traces of the Hebrew
tongue, namely, in New England
and in New Belgium,
where the word Aguara’a signifies earth, and the name Joseph
As we have seen, Bishop
is found among the Hurons.”
Walton had been forced to give up the inspiration
of the
rabbinical punctuation, but he seems to have fallen back with
all the more tenacity on what remained of the great sacred
theory of language, and to have become its leading champion among English-speaking
peoples.
At that same period the same doctrine was put forth by
In 1657 Andreas Sennert
a great authority
in Germany.
SACRED
THEORY
OF LANGUAGE
IN
ITS
SECOND
FORM.
185
published his inaugural address as Professor of Sacred Letters and Dean of the Theological
Faculty at Wittenberg.
All his efforts were given to making Luther’s old university
a fortress of the orthodox theory.
His address, like many
others in various parts of Europe, shows that in his time an
inaugural with any save an orthodox statement of the theological platform would not be tolerated.
Few things in the
past are to the sentimental
mind more pathetic, to the philosophical mind more natural, and to the progressive
mind
more ludicrous,
than addresses
at high festivals
of theoThe audience has generally consisted mainly
logical schools.
of estimable elderly gentlemen,
who received their theology
in their youth, and who in their old age have watched over
it with jealous care to keep it well protected
from every
Naturally, a theological
professor
fresh breeze of thought.
inaugurated
under such auspices endeavours
to propitiate
Sennert goes to great lengths
both in his
his audience.
address and in his grammar, published nine years later; for,
declaring
the Divine origin of Hebrew to be quite beyond
it from our first parcontroversy,
he says : ‘( Noah received
ents, and guarded it in the midst of the waters ; Heber and
Peleg saved it from the confusion of tongues.”
The same doctrine was no less loudly insisted upon by
the greatest
authority in Switzerland,
Buxtorf, professor at
Basle, who proclaimed
Hebrew to be “the tongue of God,
the tongue of angels, the tongue of the prophets ” ; and the
effect of this proclamation
may be imagined when we note
in 1663 that his book had reached its sixth edition.
It was re-echoed
through
England,
Germany,
France,
and America, and, if possible, yet more highly developed.
In England Theophilus
Gale set himself to prove that not
only all the languages, but all the learning of the world, had
been drawn from the Hebrew records.
This orthodox doctrine was also fully vindicated in Holland.
Six years before the close of the seventeenth
century,
Morinus, Doctor
of Theology,
Professor
of Oriental
Languages, and pastor at Amsterdam,
published his great work
on Primmad
Language.
Its frontispiece
depicts the confusion of tongues at Babel, and, as a pendant to this, the pentecostal gift of tongues to the apostles.
In the successive
186
FROM
BABEL
TO
COMPARATIVE
PHILOLOGY.
chapters of the first book he proves that language could not
have come into existence save as a direct gift from heaven ;
that there is a primitive language, the mother of all the rest ;
that this primitive language still exists in its pristine purity ;
The second book is dethat this language is the Hebrew.
voted to proving that the Hebrew letters were divinely received, have been preserved intact, and are the source of all
other alphabets.
But in the third book he feels obliged to
allow, in the face of the contrary dogma held, as he says,
by “not a few most eminent men piously solicitous
for the
authority of the sacred text,” that the Hebrew punctuation
was, after all, not of Divine inspiration, but a late invention
of the rabbis.
France, also, was held to all appearance in complete subjection to the orthodox
idea up to the end of the century.
In 1697 appeared atParis
perhaps the most learned of all the
books written to prove Hebrew
the original
tongue and
The Gallican Church was then at the
source of all others.
Bossuet as bishop, as thinker, and as
height of its power.
adviser of Louis XIV, had crushed all opposition to orthodoxy.
The Edict of Nantes had been revoked, and the Huguenots, so far as they could escape, were scattered throughout the world, destined to repay France with interest a thouThe bones of the
sandfold during the next two centuries.
Louis
Jansenists
at Port Royal were dug up and scattered.
XIV stood guard over the piety of his people.
It was in
the midst of this series of triumphs that Father Louis Thomassin, Priest of the Oratory,
issued his Un&~snZ H&yew
GZossary. In this, to use his own language,
“the divinity,
antiquity,
and perpetuity
of the Hebrew
tongue, with its
letters, accents, and other characters,”
are established
forever and beyond all cavil, by proofs drawn from all peoples,
kindreds, and nations under the sun. This superb, thousandcolumned folio was issued from the royal press, and is one
of the most imposing monuments of human piety and follytaking rank with the treatises of Fromundus against Galileo,
of Quaresmius
on Lot’s Wife, and of Gladstone
on Genesis
and Geology.
The great theologic-philologic
chorus was steadily maintained, and, as in a responsive
chant, its doctrines
were
SACRED
THEORY
OF
LANGUAGE
IN
ITS
SECOND
FORM.
1s7
echoed from land to land.
From America
there came the
earnest words of John Eliot, praising
Hebrew as the most
fit to be made a universal language,
and declaring
it the
tongue “which it pleased our Lord Jesus to make use of
At the close of the
when he spake from heaven unto Paul.”
seventeenth
century came from England a strong antiphonal
answer in this chorus ; Merit Casaubon, the learned Prebendary of Canterbury,
thus declared : “ One language,
the Hebrew, I hold to be simply and absolutely the source of all.”
And, to swell the chorus, there came into it, in complete
the greatest scholar of the old
unison, the voice of BentleyHe was, indeed, one
sort whom England has ever produced.
of the most learned and acute critics of any age ; but he was
also Master of Trinity, Archdeacon
of Bristol, held two livings besides, and enjoyed the honour of refusing the bishopric
of Bristol, as not rich enough to tempt him.
_iVodZrsseoblige:
that Bentley should hold a brief for the theological
side was
inevitable, and we need not be surprised when we hear him
declaring : “ We are sure, from the names of persons and
places mentioned in Scripture
before the Deluge, not to insist upon other arguments,
that the Hebrew was the primitive language of mankind, and that it continued
pure above
three thousand years until the captivity in Babylon.”
The
power of the theologic
bias, when properly stimulated with
ecclesiastical
preferment,
could hardly be more perfectly exemplified than in such a captivity of such a man as Bentley.
In
Yet here two important exceptions
should be noted.
England, Prideaux,
whose biblical studies gave him much
authority,
opposed the dominant opinion;
and in America,
Cotton Mather, who in taking his Master’s degree at Harvard had supported
the doctrine
that the Hebrew vowel
points were of divine origin, bravely recanted and declared
for the better view.*
* The quotation
from Guichard
is from L’Harmo&
I
Etymdogique
des Langues,
et E&naZogies
de touk sorte, je dP. . . dam ZaqurZZe par pZmieurs Antiquitks
nonstre
Pvidemment que toutes Zzs Zangues sent descendues de Z’HPbraique ; par M,
For Willett,
Estienne G&hard,
Paris, 1631.
The first edition appeared in 1606.
see his Hexaph,
his publication,
commendations,”
London, 1608, pp. IZS-1z8. For the Address of L’Empereur,
see
“ Other
Leyden, 1627. The quotation from Lightfoot, beginning
etc., is taken from his Erubhin,
or MisreZZaanies, edition of 1629 ;
158
FROM
BABEL
TO COMPARATIVE
PHILOLOGY.
But even this dissent produced little immediate effect, and
at the beginning of the eighteenth
century this sacred doctrine, based upon explicit statements
of Scripture,
seemed
forever settled.
As we have seen, strong fortresses had-been
built for it in every Christian
land : nothing seemed more
unlikely than that the little groups of scholars
scattered
through these various countries
could ever prevail against
them.
These strongholds
were built so firmly, and had behind them so vast an army of religionists of every creed, that
to conquer them seemed impossible.
And yet at that very
moment their doom was decreed.
Within a few years from
this period of their greatest
triumph,
the garrisons
of all
these sacred fortresses were in hopeless confusion, and the
armies behind them in full retreat;
a little later, all the important orthodox fortresses
and forces were in the hands of
the scientific philologists.
How this came about will be shown in the third part of
this chapter.
see also his works, vol. iv, pp. 46, 47, London, 1822. For Bishop Brian Walton,
see the Cambridge
edition of his works, 1828, Prokgomena,
$5 I and 3.
As to
Walton’s giving up the rabbinical points, he mentions in one of the latest editions
of his work the fact that Isaac Casaubon, Joseph Scaliger, Isaac Vossius, Grotius,
Beza, Luther, Zwingli, Brentz, (Ecolampadius,
Calvin, and even some of the popes,
For Sennert, see his Dissprtatiode Ebraice S. S. Lingua
were with him in this.
Origine, etc., Wittenberg,
1657 ; also his Grammatira Orientalis, Wittenberg,
1666.
For Bnxtorf, see the preface to his T/zesaurzls Gramnaticus Lingua San&z Hebnzw,
sixth edition, 1663. For Gale, see his Couvt of th Gentikr, Oxford, 1672. For
Morinus, see his Exercitationes de Lingua Primeva,
Utrecht, 1697. For ThomasFor John Eliot’s utsin, see his GZossarium Universale Hebraicurn,
Paris, 1697.
terance, see Mather’s Magnalia, book iii, p. 184. For Merit Casaubon, see his
De Lingua An+a
Yet., p. 160. cited by Massey, p. 16 of Origin and Progress of
For Bentley, see his works, London, 1836, vol. ii, p. II, and citations by
Iltters.
Welsford, Mithtidates Minor, p. 2. As to Bentley’s position as a scholar, see the
For a short but very interesting account of
famous estimate in Macaulay’s Essays.
him, see Mark Pattison’s article in vol. iii of the last edition of the Encychpredia
The position of Pattison as an agnostic dignitary
in. the English
39 itannica.
Church eminently fitted him to understand
Bentley’s career, both as regards the
For perhaps the most full and striking account
orthodox and the scholastic world.
of the manner in which Bentley lorded it in the scholastic world of his time, see
Monk’s Life of Bent&y, vol. ii, chap. xvii, and especially his contemptuous
reply to
the judges, as given in vol. ii, pp. 211, 212. For Cotton Mather, see his biography
by Samuel Mather, Boston, 1729, pp. 5, 6.
BREAKING
III.
BREAKING
DOWN
OF THE
DOWN
THEOLOGICAL
OF THE
THEOLOGICAL
VIEW.
189
VIEW.
We have now seen the steps by which the sacred theory
of human language
had been developed:
how it had been
strengthened
in every land until it seemed to bid defiance
forever to advancing thought ; how it rested firmly upon the
letter of Scripture,
upon the explicit declarations
of leading
fathers of the Church, of the great doctors of the Middle
Ages, of the most eminent theological
scholars down to the
beginning
of the eighteenth
century, and was guarded by
the decrees of popes, kings, bishops, Catholic and Protestant, and the whole hierarchy of authorities
in church and
state.
And yet, as we now look back, it is easy to see that even
in that hour of its triumph it was doomed.
The reason why the Church has so fully accepted
the
conclusions
of science which have destroyed the sacred theory is instructive.
The study of languages
has been, since
the Revival
of Learning
and the Reformation,
a favourite
study with the whole Western Church, Catholic and Protes_
tant.
The importance
of understanding
the ancient tongues
in which our sacred books are preserved first stimulated the
study, and Church missionary efforts have contributed
nobly
to supply the material for extending it, and for the application of that comparative
method which, in philology
as in
other sciences,
has been so fruitful.
Hence it is that so
many leading theologians
have come to know at first hand
the truths given by this science, and to recognise its fundamental principles.
What the conclusions which they, as well
as all other scholars in this field, have been absoIutely forced
to accept, I shall now endeavour to show.
The beginnings of a scientific theory seemed weak indeed,
but they were none the less effective.
As far back as 1661,
Hottinger,
professor at Heidelberg,
came into the chorus of
theologians
like a great bell in a chime ; but like a bell whose
opening tone is harmonious
and whose closing tone is disFor while, at the beginning, Hottinger
cites a forcordant.
midable list of great scholars who had held the sacred theory of the origin of language, he goes on to note a closer
resemblance
to the Hebrew
in some languages
than in
190
FROM
BABEL
TO
COMPARATIVE
PHILOLOGY.
others, and explains this by declaring
that the confusion of
tongues was of two sorts, total and partial:
the Arabic and
Chaldaic he thinks underwent
only a partial confusion;
the
Egyptian, Persian, and all the European
languages
a total
one.
Here comes in the discord ; here gently sounds forth
from the great chorus a new note-that
idea of grouping
which at a later day was to deand classifyin g languages
stroy utterly the whole sacred theory.
But the great chorus resounded on, as we have seen, from
shore to shore, until the closing years of the seventeenth century ; then arose men who silenced
it forever.
The first
leader who threw the weight of his knowledge, thought, and
authority against it was Leibnitz.
He declared,
“There
is
as much reason for supposing
Hebrew
to have been the
primitive language of mankind as there is for adopting the
view of Goropius, who published a work at Antwerp in 1580
to prove that Dutch was the language spoken in paradise.”
In a letter to Tenzel, Leibnitz wrote, “ To call Hebrew the
primitive
language
is like calling the branches
of a tree
primitive
branches, or like imagining
that in some country
hewn trunks could grow instead of trees.”
He also asked,
(( If the primeval language existed even up to the time of
Moses, whence came the Egyptian language?”
But the efficiency of Leibnitz did not end with mere sugHe applied the inductive
method to linguistic
gestions.
study, made great efforts to have vocabularies
collected and
grammars
drawn up wherever
missionaries
and travellers
came in contact with new races, and thus succeeded
in giving the initial impulse to at least three notable collectionsthat of Catharine
the Great, of Russia;
that of the Spanish
Jesuit, Lorenzo Hervas;
and, at a later period, the M&r&
The interest of the Empress Catharine in
dates of Adelung.
her collection
of linguistic
materials was very strong, and
her influence is seen in the fact that Washington,
to please
her, requested
governors
and generals to send in materials
from various parts of the United States and the Territories.
The work of Hervas extended over the period from 1735 to
I 8og : a missionary
in America, he enlarged his catalogue of
languages to six volumes, which were published in Spanish
in 1800, and contained
specimens of more than three hun-
i
BREAKING
DOWN
OF THE
THEOLOGICAL
VIEW.
191
dred languages, with the grammars of more than forty.
It
should be said to his credit that Hervas dared point out with
especial care the limits of the Semitic family of languages,
and declared, as a result of his enormous
studies, that the
various languages of mankind could not have been derived
from the Hebrew.
While such work was done in Catholic
Spain, Protestant Germany was honoured
by the work of -Adelung.
It
contained
the Lord’s Prayer
in nearly five hundred languages and dialects, and the comparison
of these, early in
the nineteenth
century,
helped to end the sway of theological philology.
But the period which intervened
between Leibnitz and
this modern development
was a period of philological
chaos.
It began mainly with the doubts which Leibnitz had forced
upon Europe, and ended only with the beginning
of the
study of Sanskrit in the latter half of the eighteenth century,
and with the comparisons
made by means of the collections
of Catharine, Hervas, and Adelung at the beginning of the
nineteenth.
The old theory that Hebrew was the original
language had gone to pieces ; but nothing had taken its place
as a finality.
Great authorities, like Buddeus, were still cited
in behalf of the narrower belief; but everywhere
researches,
unorganized
though they were, tended to destroy it. The
story of Babel continued indeed throughout the whole eighteenth century to hinder or warp scientific investigation,
and
a very curious illustration of this fact is seen in the book of
Lord Nelme on T/‘teOrigilt and EZeements of Lazgmge.
He
declares that connected with the confusion was the cleaving
of America
from Europe, and he regards the most terrible
chapters in the book of Job as intended for a description
of
the Flood, which in all probability
Job had from Noah himself.
Again, Rowland Jones tried to prove that Celtic was
the primitive tongue, and that it passed through Babel unharmed.
Still another effect was made by a Breton to prove *
that all languages took their rise in the language of Brittany.
,411 was chaos.
There was much wrangling, but little earnest controversy.
Here and there theologians
were calling
out frantically,
beseeching
the Church- to save the old doctrine as “essential
to the truth of Scripture ” ; here and there
192
FROM
BABEL
TO
COMPARATIVE
PHILOLOGY.
other divines began to foreshadow
the inevitable
compromise which has always been thus vainly attempted
in the
But it was soon seen by thinking
history of every science.
men that no concessions
as yet spoken of by theologians
In the latter half of the century came the
were sufficient.
bloom period of the French philosophers
and encyclopedists,
of the English deists, of such German thinkers as Herder,
Kant, and Lessing ; and while here and there some writer on
the theological
side, like Perrin, amused thinking
men by
his flounderings
in this great chaos, all remained without
form and void.*
Nothing better reveals to us the darkness and duration
of this chaos in England than a comparison of the articles on
Philology given in the successive editions of the Encydopmz’ia
Britannica.
The first edition of that great mirror of British
thought was printed in 1771 : chaos reigns through the whole
of its article on this subject.
The writer divides languages
into two classes, seems to indicate a mixture of divine inspiration with human invention, and finally escapes under a cloud.
In the second edition, published in 1780, some progress
has
been made.
The author states the sacred theory, and declares : “ There are some divines who pretend that Hebrew
was the language in which God talked with Adam in paradise, and that the saints will make use of it in heaven in
those praises which they will eternally offer to the Almighty.
These doctors seem to be as certain in regard to what is past
as to what is to come.”
It clearly outThis was evidently considered dangerous.
* For Hottinger, see the preface to his Etymdogicum Orientale, Frankfort, 1661.
For Leibnitz, Catharine the Great, Hervas, and Adelung, see Max Miiller, as above,
from whom I have quoted very fully ; see also Benfey, Gesc~z2te der .Sprachwismuchaft,
etc., p. 269. Benfey declares that the Catalogue of Hervas is even now
For the first two citations from Leibnitz, as well as for
a mine for the philologist.
a statement of his importance
in the history of languages, see Max Miiller as above,
* pp. 135, 136. For the third quotation, Leibnitz, Opera. Geneva, 1768, vi, part ii,
p. 232. For Nelme, see his Or&& and ~kmenls of Language,
London, 1772, pp.
85-100.
For Rowland Jones, see The Or&-& of Language and iVa&ns, London,
1764, and preface.
For the origin of languages in Brittany, see Le Brigant, Paris,
For Herder
and Lessing, see Canon Farrar’s
treatise;
on Lessing, see
1787.
Sayce, as above.
As to Perrin, see his essay SW I’Origine et I’AntipitP
des
Langues, London, 1767.
_
TRIUMPH
OF THE
NEW
SCIENCE.
I93
ran the belief of the average British Philistine;
and accordingly we find in the third edition,’ published seventeen years
later, a new article, in which, while the author gives, as he
says, ‘( the best arguments on both sides,” he takes pains to
adhere to a fairly orthodox theory.
This soothing dose was repeated in the fourth and fifth
In 1824 appeared a supplement to the fourth, fifth,
editions.
and sixth editions, which dealt with the facts so far as they
were known; but there was scarcely a reference
to the biblical theory throughout
the article.
Three years later came
While this chaos was fast becoming
another supplement.
cosmos in Germany, such a change had evidently not gone
far in England, for from this edition of the EncycZop&ia the
subject of philology was omitted.
In fact, Babel and Philology made nearly as much trouble to encyclopedists
as
Just as in the latter case they
Noah’s Deluge and Geology.
had been obliged to stave off a presentation of scientific truth,
by the words “ For Deluge, see Flood ” and “ For Flood, see
Noah,” so in the former they were obliged to take various
provisional measures, some of them comical.
In 1842 came
the seventh edition.
In this the first part of the old article
on Philology which had appeared in the third, fourth, and fifth
editions was printed, but the supernatural
part was mainly
cut out.
Yet we find a curious evidence of the continued
reign of chaos in a foot-note inserted by the publishers, disavowing any departure
from orthodox
views.
In 1859 appeared the eighth edition.
This abandoned the old article
completely,
and in its place gave a history of philology free
from admixture of scriptural doctrines.
Finally, in the year
1885, appeared the ninth edition, in which Professors
Whitney of Yale and Sievers of Tiibingen
give admirably and in
fair compass what is known of philology,
making short
work of the sacred theory-in
fact, throwing
it overboard
entirely.
IV.
TRIUMPH
OF THE
NEW
SCIENCE.
Such was that chaos of thought into which the discovery
of Sanskrit suddenly threw its great light.
Well does one
of the foremost modern philologists
say that this “ was the
41
‘94
FROM BABEL
TO COMPARATIVE
PHILOLOGY.
electric spark which caused the floating elements to crystallize into regular forms.”
Among the first to bring the knowledge of Sanskrit
to Europe were the Jesuit missionaries,
whose services to the material basis of the science of corn__
parative philology
had already been so great;
and the importance
of the new discovery
was soon seen among all
scholars, whether orthodox or scientific.
In 1784 the Asiatic
Society at Calcutta was founded, and with it began Sanskrit
philology.
Scholars like Sir William Jones, Carey, Wilkins,
Foster, Colebrooke,
did noble work in the new field. A new
spirit brooded over that chaos, and a great new orb of science was evolved.
The little group of scholars who gave themselves
up to
these researches,
though almost without exception
reverent
Christians, were recognised
at once by theologians as mortal
Not only was
foes of the whole sacred theory of language.
the dogma of the multiplication
of languages
at the Tower
of Babel swept out of sight by the new discovery,
but the
still more vital dogma of the divine origin of language, never
before endangered,
was felt to be in peril, since the evidence
became overwhelming
that so many varieties had been produced by a process of natural growth.
Heroic efforts were therefore
made, in the supposed into discredit
the new learning.
Even
terest of Scripture,
such a man as Dugald Stewart
declared that the discovery
of Sanskrit was altogether
fraudulent, and endeavoured
to
prove that the Brahmans had made it up from the vocabulary
Others exercised their
and grammar
of Greek and Latin.
ingenuity in picking the new discovery
to pieces, and still
others attributed it all to the machinations
of Satan.
On the other hand, the more thoughtful
men in the
Church endeavoured
to save something
from the wreck of
the old system by a compromise.
They attempted
to prove
that Hebrew is at least a cognate tongue with the original
speech of mankind, if not the original speech itself;
but
here they were confronted
by the authority
they dreaded
most-the
great Christian scholar, Sir William Jones himself.
His words were: “ I can only declare my belief that the language of Noah is irretrievably
lost.
After diligent search I
can not find a single word used in common by the Arabian,
TRIUMPH
OF
THE
NEW
SCIENCE.
195
Indian, and Tartar families, before the intermixture
of dialects occasioned
by the Mohammedan
conquests.”
So, too, in Germany came full acknowledgment
of the
new truth, and from a Roman Catholic, Frederick
Schlegel.
He accepted the discoveries in the old language and literature of India as final: he saw the significance
of these discoveries as regards philology, and grouped the languages of
India, Persia, Greece,
Italy, and Germany under the name
afterward so universally
accepted-Indo-Germanic.
It now began to be felt more and more, even among the
most devoted churchmen, that the old theological
dogmas
regarding
the origin of language, as held “always,
everywhere, and by all,” were wrong, and that Lucretius
and
sturdy old Gregory of Nyssa might be right.
During ages the great
But this was not the only wreck.
men in the Church had been calling upon the world to admire the amazing exploit of Adam in naming the animals
which Jehovah had brought before him, and to accept the
history of language in the light of this exploit.
The early
fathers, the medieval
doctors, the great divines of the Reformation period, Catholic and Protestant, had united in this
universal chorus.
Clement of Alexandria
declared Adam’s
St. John
naming of the animals proof of a prophetic
gift.
Chrysostom insisted that it was an evidence of consummate
intelligence.
Eusebius held that the phrase “That was the
name thereof” implied that each name embodied
the real
character and description
of the animal concerned.
This view was echoed by a multitude
of divines in the
seventeenth
and eighteenth
centuries.
Typical among these
was the great Dr. South, who, in his sermon on 2% Sinte of
Man before the Fall, declared
that CLAdam came into the
world a philosopher,
which sufficiently appears by his writing the nature of things upon their names.”
In the chorus of modern English divines there appeared
one of eminence
who declared
against this theory:
Dr.
Shuckford,
chaplain in ordinary to his Majesty George II,
in the preface to his work on Tjte Creation and FaZZ of Man,
He
pronounced the whole theory “ romantic and irrational.”
goes on to say: “The
original
of our speaking was from
God ; not that God put into Adam’s mouth the very sounds
FROM
196
BABEL
TO
COMPARATIVE
PHILOLOGY.
which he designed he should use as the names of things; but
God made Adam with the powers of a man; he had the use
of an understanding
to form notions in his mind of the things
about him, and he had the power to utter sounds which should
be to himself the names of things according as he might think
fit to call them.”
This echo of Gregory
of Nyssa was for many years of
little avail.
Historians of philosophy still began with Adam,
because only a philosopher
could have named all created
things.
There was, indeed, one difficulty which had much
troubled some theologians : this was, that fishes were not
specially mentioned among the animals brought by Jehovah
before Adam for naming.
To meet this difficulty there was
much argument, and some theologians
laid stress on the dif.
ficulty of bringing fishes from the sea to the Garden of Eden
to receive their names; but naturally other theologians
replied that the almighty
power which created
the fishes
could have easily brought them into the garden, one by one,
even from the uttermost parts of the sea.
This point, therefore, seems to have been left in abeyance.*
It had continued, then, the universal belief in the Church
that the names of all created things, except possibly fishes,
were given by Adam and in Hebrew;
but all this theory
was whelmed in ruin when it was found that there were
other and indeed earlier names for the same animals than
those in the Hebrew language ; and especially was this enforced on thinking
men when the Egyptian
discoveries
beof
animals
with
their
names
in
gan to reveal the pictures
* For the danger of “the little system of the history of the xrorld,” see Sayce,
On Dugald Stewart’s contention, see Max Miiller, Lectwes o?z Language,
as above.
For Sir William Jones, see his Works, London, 1807, vol. i, p. 199.
pp. 167, 168.
For an enormous list of great theoFor Schlegel, see Max Miiller, as above.
logians,
from the fathers
gifts of Adam
citation
from
Honz. XIV
quotations
down, who dwelt on the divine
on this subject,
Clement
see Canon
of Alexandria
Farrar,
is Strom.,
inspiration
Language
i, p. 335.
and wonderful
The
and Langua,rre.
See
also Chrysostom,
For the two
Pmp. Evang. XI, p. 6.
above given from Shuckford, see The Creation and FaN
preface, p. lxxxiii ; also his Sacred and Profane History
in Genesin ; also Eusebius,
of Man,
Lon-
don, 1763,
of the Wodd,
1753: revised edition by Wheeler,
London,
1858.
For the argument
regarding
the difficulty of bringing
the fishes to be named into the Garden of Eden, see
Massey,
Orz@
and Progress
of Letters, London,
1763, pp. 14-19.
TRIUMPH
OF THE
NEW
SCIENCE.
‘97
hieroglyphics
at a period earlier than that agreed on by all
the sacred chronologists
as the date of the Creation.
Still another part of the sacred theory now received
its
Closely allied with the question of the origin
death-blow.
of language was that of the origin of letters.
The earlier
writers had held that letters were also a divine gift to
Adam ; but as we go on in the eighteenth
century we find
theological
opinion inclining to the belief that this gift was
This, as we have seen, was the view of
reserved for Moses.
St. John Chrysostom ; and an eminent English divine early
in the eighteenth
century,
John Johnson,
Vicar of Kent,
echoed it in the declaration
concerning
the alphabet, that
ii Moses first learned it from God by means of the lettering
But here a difficulty arose-the
on the tables of the law.”
biblical statement
that God commanded
Moses to “ write in
his
decree
concerning
Amalek
before he went up
a book”
into Sinai.
With this the good vicar grapples
manfully.
He supposes that God had previously concealed
the tables
of stone in Mount Horeb, and that Moses, “when he kept
Jethro’s
sheep thereabout,
had free access to these tables,
and perused them at discretion,
though
he was not perOur reconciler
then
mitted to carry them down with him.”
asks for what other reason could God have kept Moses up
in the mountain forty days at a time, except to teach him to
write ; and says, “ It seems highly probable that the angel
gave him the alphabet of the Hebrew, or in some other way
unknown to us became his guide.”
But this theory of letters was soon to be doomed like the
other parts of the sacred theory.
Studies in Comparative
Philology,
based upon researches
in India, began to be reenforced by facts regarding
the inscriptions
in Egypt, the
cuneiform
inscriptions
of Assyria, the legends of Chaldea,
and the folklore of China-where
it was found in the sacred
books that the animals were named by Fohi, and with such
wisdom and insight that every name disclosed the nature of
the corresponding
animal.
But, although the old theory was doomed, heroic efforts
were still made to support it. In 1788 James Beattie, in all
the glory of his Oxford doctorate and royal pension, made a
vigorous onslaught, declaring
the new system of philology
198
FROM
BABEL
TO COMPARATIVE
PHILOLOGY.
to be “ degrading to our nature,” and that the theory of the
natural development
of language is simply due to the beauty
of Lucretius’ poetry.
But his main weapon was ridicule, and
in this he showed himself a master.
He tells the world, “The
following paraphrase has nothing of the elegance of Horace
or Lucretius,
but seems to have all the elegance
that so
ridiculous a doctrine deserves ” :
“ When men out of the earth of old
A dumb and beastly vermin crawled ;
For acorns, first, and holes of shelter,
They tooth and nail, and helter skelter,
Fought fist to fist ; then with a club
Each learned his brother brute to drub ;
Till, more experienced grown, these cattle
Forged fit accoutrements for battle.
At last (Lucretius says and Creech)
They set their wits to work on s#eecA :
And that their thoughts might all have marks
To make them known, these learned clerks
Left off the trade of cracking crowns,
And manufactured verbs and nouns.”
But a far more powerful theologian
entered the field in
England to save the sacred theory of language-Dr.
Adam
Clarke.
He was no less severe against Philology than against
Geology.
In 1804, as President
of the Manchester
Philo.
logical Society, he delivered an address in which he declared
that, while men of all sects were eligible to membership,
“ he
who rejects the establishment
of what we believe to be a
divine revelation, he who would disturb the peace of the quiet,
and by doubtful disputations unhinge the minds of the simple
and unreflecting,
and endeavour
to turn the unwary out of
the way of peace and rational subordination,
can have no
The first senseat among the members of this institution.”
tence in this declaration gives food for reflection, for it is the
same confusion of two ideas which has been at the root of so
much interference
of theology with science for the last two
Adam Clarke speaks of those “ who reject
thousand years.
the establishment
of what ‘we beheve’ to be a divine revelation.”
Thus comes in that customary begging of the question-the
substitution,
as the real significance
of Scripture,
of ‘( what we believe” for what is.
TRIUMPH
/
OF THE
NEW
SCIENCE.
‘99
The intended result, too, of this ecclesiastical
sentence
It was, that great men like Sir William
was simple enough.
Jones, Colebrooke,
and their cornpeers, must not be heard in
the Manchester
Philological
Society in discussion with Dr.
Adam Clarke on questions
regarding
Sanskrit
and other
matters regarding which they knew all that was then known,
and Dr. Clarke knew nothing.
But even Clarke was forced to yield to the scientific current.
Thirty years later, in his Co~znzentn7y OIZthe OM Trstn~nt,
he pitched the claims of the sacred theory on a much
lower key.
He says: “ hlankind was of one language, in all
likelihood
the Hebrew.
. . . The proper names and other
significations
given in the Scripture
seem incontestable
evidence that the Hebrew language was the original language
of the earth,-the
language in which God spoke to man, and
in which he gave the revelation of his will to Moses and the
Here are signs that this great champion is growprophets.”
ing weaker in the faith. . in the citations made it will be observed he no longer says “ is,” but “ seems” ; and finally we
have him saying, “ What the first language
was is almost
useless to inquire, as it is impossible
to arrive at any satisfactory information
on this point.”
In France, during the fn-st half of the nineteenth century,
yet more heavy artillery was wheeled into place, in order to
make a last desperate
defence of the sacred theory.
The
leaders in this effort were the three great Ultramontanes,
De hlaistre,
De Bonald, and Lamennais.
Condillac’s
contention that ‘( languages
were gradually
and insensibly acquired, and that every man had his share of the general
result,” they attacked
with reasoning
based upon premises
drawn from the book of Genesis.
De Maistre especially excelled in ridiculing the philosophic
or scientific theory.
Lamennais, who afterward became so vexatious
a thorn in the
side of the Church, insisted, at this earlier period, that “ man
can no more think without words than see without light.”
And then, by that sort of mystical play upon words so well
known in the higher
ranges of theologic
reasoning,
he
clinches his argument by saying, “ The Word is truly and in
every sense ‘ the light which lighteth every man that cometh
into the world.’ ”
200
FROM
BABEL
TO COMPARATIVE
PHILOLOGY.
But even such champions as these could not stay the progWhile they seemed to be carrying
everyress of thought.
thing before them in France, researches in philology made at
such centres of thought as the Sorbonne and the College of
France were undermining
their last great fortress.
Curious
indeed is it to find that the Sorbonne, the stronghold
of theology through
so many centuries,
was now made in the
nineteenth
century the arsenal and stronghold
of the new
But the most striking result of the new tendency in
ideas.
France was seen when the greatest of the three champions,
Lamennais himself, though offered the highest Church preferment, and even a cardinal’s hat, braved the papal anathema,
and went over to the scientific side.”
In Germany philological
science took so strong a hold
that its positions
were soon recognised
as impregnable.
Leaders
like the Schlegels,
Wilhelm
von Humboldt,
and
above all Franz Bopp and Jacob Grimm, gave such additional force to scientific
truth that it could no longer be
To say nothing of other conquests, the demonwithstood.
stration of that great law in philology which bears Grimm’s
name brought home to all thinking men the evidence that
the evolution of language
had not been determined
by the
philosophic
utterances
of Adam in naming
the animals
which Jehovah
brought
before him, but in obedience
to
natural law.
True,
a few devoted theologians showed themselves willing to lead a forlorn hope ; and perhaps the most forlorn of
all was that of 1840, led by Dr. Gottlieb
Christian
Kayser,
* For Johnson’s work, showing how Moses learned the alphabet, see the CoZZection of Discourses by Rev. John Johnson, A. M., Vicar of Kent, London, 1728, p.
42, and the preface.
For Beattie, see his Theory of Langzrage, London, 1788, p.
98 ; also pp. 100, IOI. For Adam Clarke, see, for the speech cited, his MisceZZaneous
Works, London, 1837 ; for the passage from his Commeniary, see the London edition
of 1836, vol. i, p. 93 ; for the other passage, see Zntroductz’oion to BibZiogmphicaZ
MixeZZany, quoted in article, On’gin of Language
and A@hadeti>aZ Ckaracters, in
For De Bonald, see his Recherckes PkiZoMethodist
Magmine,
vol. xv, p. 214.
sophiques, part iii, chap. ii, De Z’Origine a’u Langage.
in his (Euvres CompZ&s,
Paris, 1859, pp. 64-78, passim.
For Joseph de Maistre, see his CE‘uw-es; Bruxelles,
For La1852, vol. i, Les Soir.es de Saint F’etersbourg, deuxieme entretien,passim.
mennais, see his CE’uvres CompZ&es, Paris, 1836-‘37, tome ii, pp. 78-81, chap. xv of
Essai
SW Z’Zndif&ence
en Mati2re
de Religion.
TRIUMPH
L
,
,b’
I
OF THE
NEW
SCIENCE.
201
Professor of Theology at the Protestant
University
of Erlangen.
He does not, indeed, dare put in the old claim that
Hebrew is identical with the primitive tongue, but he insists
that it is nearer it than any other.
He relinquishes
the two
former theological
strongholds-first,
the idea that language
was taught by the Almighty
to Adam, and, next, that the
alphabet was thus taught to Moses-and
falls back on the
position that all tongues are thus derived from Noah, giving
as an example the language of the Caribbees, and insisting
that it was evidently
so derived.
What chance similarity
in words between
Hebrew
and the Caribbee
tongue he
had in mind is past finding out.
He comes out strongly
in defence of the biblical account of the Tower of Babel,
and insists that “by the symbolical
expression
‘ God said,
natural phenomenon
is intiLet us go down,’ a further
mated, to wit, the cleaving
of the earth, whereby the return of the dispersed
became
impossible-that
is to say,
through a new or not universal flood, a partial inundation
and temporary
violent separation of great continents
until
the time of the rediscovery.”
By these words the learned
doctor means nothing less than the separation
of Europe
from America.
While at the middle of the nineteenth century the theory
of the origin and development
of language was upon the
continent
considered
as settled, and a well-ordered
science
had there emerged
from the old chaos, Great Britain still
held back, in spite of the fact that the most important
contributors to the science were of British
origin.
Leaders in
every English church and sect vied with each other, either
in denouncing the encroachments
of the science of language
or in explaining them away.
But a new epoch had come, and in a way least expected.
Perhaps the most notable effort in bringing it in was made
by Dr. Wiseman, afterward
Cardinal Archbishop
of Westminster.
His is one of the best examples of a method which
has been used with considerable
effect during the latest
stages of nearly all the controversies
between
theology
and science.
It consists in stating, with much fairness, the
conclusions
of the scientific
authorities,
and then in persuading one’s self and trying to persuade others that the
202
FROM
BABEL
TO COMPARXTIVE
PHILOLOGY.
Church has always accepted them and accepts them now as
“additional
proofs of the truth of Scripture.”
A little juggling with words, a little amalgamation
of texts, a little judicious suppression,
a little imaginative
deduction,
a little
unctuous phrasing, and the thing is done. One great service
this eminent and kindly Catholic
champion
undoubtedly
rendered : by this acknowledgment,
so widely spread in his
published
lectures, he made it impossible
for Catholics or
Protestants
longer to resist the main conclusions
of science.
Henceforward
we only have .efforts to save theological
appearances,
and these only by men whose zeal outran their
discretion.
On both sides of the Atlantic, down to a recent period,
we see these efforts, but we see no less clearly that they are
mutually destructive.
Yet out of this chaos among Englishspeaking peoples the new science began to develop steadily
and rapidly.
Attempts
did indeed continue here and there
to save the old theory.
Even as late as 1859 we hear the
eminent Presbyterian
divine, Dr. John Cumming, from his
pulpit in London, speaking of Hebrew as “ that magnificent
tongue-that
mother-tongue,
from which all others are but
distant and debilitated
progenies.”
But the honour of producing
in the nineteenth century
the most absurd known attempt to prove Hebrew the primitive tongue belongs to the youngest
of the continents, AusIn the year 1857 was printed at Melbourne
The Tritralia.
umph of Truth,
OY a PopuZanr Lecture
on the Or@+2 of Languages,
M. R. C. P. L.-whatever
that may mean.
by B. Atkinson,
In this work, starting with the assertion that “the Hebrew
was the primary stock whence all languages were derived,”
the author states that Sanskrit is “ a dialect of the Hebrew,”
and declares
that “the manuscripts
found with mummies
agree precisely with the Chinese version of the Psalms of
It all sounds like A&e in Wonderland.
Curiously
David.”
enough, in the latter part of his book, evidently
thinking
that his, views would not give him authority among fastidious philologists,
he says, “A great deal of our consent to
the foregoing
statements
arises in our belief in the Divine
inspiration
of the Mosaic account
of the creation
of the
world and of our first parents in the Garden of Eden.”
A
TRIUMPH
OF THE
NEW
SCIENCE.
203
yet more interesting
light is thrown upon the author’s view
of truth, and of its promulgation,
by his dedication : he says
that, (( being persuaded that literary men ought to be fostered
his treatise “to his Exby the hand of power, ” he dedicates
of
cellency Sir H. Barkly, ” who was at the time Governor
Victoria.
Still another curious survival is seen in a work which appeared as late as 1885, at Edinburgh,
by William
Galloway,
h1. A., Ph.D.,
M.D.
The author thinks that he has produced abundant evidence to prove that “Jehovah,
the Second Person of the Godhead, wrote the first chapter of Genesis on a stone pillar, and that this is the manner by which
he first revealed
it to Adam ; and thus Adam was taught
not only to speak but to read and write by Jehovah,
the
Divine Son ; and that the first lesson he got was from the
first chapter of Genesis.”
He goes on to say: “Jehovah
wrote these first two documents;
the first containing
the
history of the Creation,
and the second the revelation
of
man’s redemption,
. . . for Adam’s and Eve’s instruction ;
it is evident that he wrote them in the Hebrew tongue, because that was the language of Adam and Eve.”
But this
was only a flower out of season.
And, finally, in these latter days Mr. Gladstone has touched
the subject.
With that well-known facility in believing anything he wishes to believe, which he once showed in connecting Neptune’s
trident with the doctrine of the Trinity,
he floats airily over all the impossibilities
of the original
Babel legend and all the conquests of science, makes an assertion regarding
the results of philology which no philologist of any standing
would admit, and then escapes in a
cloud of rhetoric
after his well-known fashion.
This, too,
must be set down simply as a survival, for in the British
Isles as elsewhere the truth has been established.
Such men
as Max Miller and Sayce in England,-Steinthal,
Schleicher,
Weber, Karl Abel, and a host of others in Germany,-Ascoli
and De Gubernatis
in Italy,-and
Whitney,
with the scholars inspired
by him, in America,
have carried
the new
science to a complete
triumph.
The sons of Yale University may well be proud of the fact that this old Puritan
foundation
was made the headquarters
of the American
204
FROM
BABEL
Oriental Society,
this field.*
TO
COMPARATIVE
which has done
PHILOLOGY.
so much
for the truth
in
V. SUMMARY.
It may be instructive,
in concIusion, to sum up briefly the
history of the whole struggle.
First, as to the origin of speech, we have in the beginning the whole Church rallying
around the idea that the
original language was Hebrew ; that this language, even including the medizeval rabbinical
punctuation,
was directly
inspired by the Almighty ; that Adam was taught it by God
himself in walks and talks; and that all other languages were
derived from it at the “confusion
of Babel.”
Next, we see parts of this theory fading out: the inspiration of the rabbinical
points begins to disappear ; Adam, instead of being taught directly by God, is “ inspired ” by him.
Then comes the third stage: advanced
theologians
endeavour to compromise
on the idea that Adam was “ given
verbal roots and a mental power.”
Finally, in our time, we have them accepting
the theory
that language
is the result of an evolutionary
process in
obedience
to laws more or less clearly ascertained.
Babel
thus takes its place quietly among the sacred myths.
As to the origin of writin,, 0‘ we have the more eminent
theologians
at first insisting that God taught Adam to write ;
next we find them gradually retreating
from this position,
but insisting that writing was taught to the world by Noah.
After the retreat from this position, we find them insisting
that it was Moses whom God taught to write.
But scientific
modes of thought still progressed,
and we next have influential theologians
agreeing
that writing was a Mosaic invention ; this is followed by another theological
retreat to the
Finally,
invention.
position that writin g was a post-Mosaic
all the positions are relinquished, save by some few skirmish* For Mr. Gladstone’s view, see his 1mpregna6Ze Rock of IfoZy Sculpture, London, 1890, pp. 241 et sq.
The passage connecting the trident of Neptune with the
To any American boy who sees how inevitably,
Trinity is in his Juventus
Mu&i.
both among Indian and white fishermen, the fish-spear takes the three-pronged
form, this utterance of Mr. Gladstone is amazing.
SUMMARY.
205
ers who appear now and then upon the horizon, making attempts to defend some subtle method of “reconciling”
the
Babel myth with modern science.
Just after the middle of the nineteenth century the last.
stage of theological
defence was evidently reached-the
same
which is seen in the history of almost every science after it
has successfully
fought its way through the theological
period-the
declaration
which we have already seen foreshadowed by Wiseman, that. the scientific discoveries
in question
are nothing new, but have really always been known and
held by the Church, and that they simply substantiate
the
This new contention, which
position taken by the Church.
always betokens the last gasp of theological
resistance
to
In 1856 it was
science, was now echoed from land to land.
given forth by a divine of the Anglican Church, Archdeacon
He gives a long list of eminent philoloPratt, of Calcutta.
gists who had done most to destroy the old supernatural
view of language, reads into their utterances his own wishes,
and then exclaims, “ So singularly do their labours confirm
the literal truth of Scripture.”
Two years later this contention
was echoed from the
American Presbyterian
Church, and Dr. B. W. Dwight, having stigmatized
as “infidels”
those who had not incorporated into their science the literal acceptance
of Hebrew
legend, declared
that “ chronology,
ethnography,
and etymology have all been tortured in vain to make them contradict the Mosaic account of the early history of man.”
Twelve
years later this was re-echoed from England.
The
Rev. Dr. Baylee, Principal of the College of St. Aidan’s, declared, “ With regard to the varieties
of human language,
the account of the confusion of tongues is receiving
daily
confirmation
by all the recent discoveries
in comparative
philology.”
So, too, in the same year (1870), in the United
Presbyterian
Church of Scotland, Dr. John Eadie, Professor
of Biblical Literature
and Exegesis, declared,
“ Fomparative
philology has established
the miracle of Babel.”
A skill in theology and casuistry so exquisite as to contrive such assertions, and a faith so robust as to accept them,
certainly
leave nothing to be desired.
But how baseless
these contentions are is shown, first, by the simple history of
206
FROM
BABEL
TO
COMPARATIVE
PHILOLOGY.
the attitude of the Church toward this question ; and, secondly, by the fact that comparative
philology
now reveals
beyond a doubt that not only is Hebrew not the original or
oldest language upon earth, but that it is not even the oldest
form in the Semitic group to which it belongs.
To use the
words of one of the most eminent modern authorities,
CLIt
is now generally recognised
that in grammatical
structure
the Arabic preserves much more of the original forms than
either the Hebrew or Aramaic.”
History,
ethnology,
and philology
now combine inexorably to place the account of the confusion of tongues and
the dispersion of races at Babel among the myths; but their
work has not been merely destructive : more and more strong
are the grounds for belief in an evolution of language.
A very complete
acceptance
of the scientific doctrines
has been made by Archdeacon
Farrar, Canon of Westminster.
With a boldness which in an earlier period might have
cost him dear, and which merits praise even now for its courage, he says : “ For all reasoners except that portion of the
clergy who in all ages have been found among the bitterest
enemies of scientific
discovery,
these considerations
have
been conclusive.
But, strange to say, here, as in so many
other instances, this self-styled
orthodoxy-more
orthodox
than the Bible itself-directly
contradicts
the very Scriptures which it professes to explain, and by sheer misrepresentation succeeds in producing
a needless and deplorable
collision between the statements of Scripture and those other
mighty and certain truths which have been revealed to science and humanity as their glory and reward.”
Still another
acknowledgment
was made in America
through
the instrumentality
of a divine of the Methodist
Episcopal Church, whom the present generation at least will
hold in honour not only for his scholarship
but for his patriotism in the darkest hour of his country’s need-John
MCClintock.
In the article on Lnn,rruage, in the Biblical Cyclopedia, edited by him and the Rev. Dr. Strong, which appeared in 1873, the whole sacred theory is given up, and the
scientific view accepted.*
* For Kayser, see his work, ~~c&+rdie Urspracde, o&r t2ber eine Behauptun.$
.
SUMMARY.
207
It may, indeed, be now fairly said that the thinking leaders of theology have come to accept the conclusions of science regarding
the origin of language,
as against the old
explanations
by myth and legend.
The result has been a
blessing both to science and to religion.
No harm has been
done to religion ; what has been done is to release it from
the clog of theories which thinking men saw could no longer
be maintained.
No matter what has become of the naming
of the animals by Adam, of the origin of the name Babel, of
the fear of the Almighty
lest men might climb up into his
realm above the firmament, and of the confusion of tongues
and the dispersion of nations ; the essentials of Christianity,
as taught by its blessed Founder,
have simply been freed,
by Comparative
Philology, from one more great incubus, and
have therefore been left to work with more power upon the
hearts and minds of mankind.
Nor has any harm been done to the Bible.
On the contrary, this divine revelation
through science has made it all
the more precious to us. In these myths and legends caught
from earlier civilizations
we see an evolution of the most
Myth,
important
religious and moral truths for our race.
M&s, dassa& SpracAen drr
Erlangen,
Welt uon einer
einzigen
acr Abnchisc~en
a6sfantvwz,
pp. 5, 80, 95, 112. For Wiseman, see his Lectum
on the Connection between Science and ReveaZed ReZigion, London,
1830.
For
examples typical of very many in this field, see the works of Pratt, 1856 ; Dwight,
1858 ; Jamieson,
1868. ’ For citation from Gumming,
see his Great Tribulation,
London. 1859, p. 4 : see also his TKzgs 1Ll’ara’ to be Understood,
London, 1861, p.
48.
For an admirable summary
of the work of the great modern philologists, and
a most careful estimate of the conclusions
reached, see Prof. Whitney’s article on
PhiZoZogy in the EncycZop&ia
B&am&a.
A copy of Mr. Atkinson’s book is in
the Harvard
1840 ; see especially
it having been presented by the Trustees of the PubGalloway, see his P/$Zosophy of the Creation, Edinburgh and London, 1885,pp. 21,238, 239,446.
For citation from Raylee, see his
Ye&I ZnsPi?ation the True Characteristic of (;od’s HO(Y Word, London, 1870, p.
I4 and elsewhere.
For Archdeacon
Pratt, see his .%?ipture and Science not at variance, London, 1856, p. 55.
For the citation from Dr. Eadie, see his BibZicaZ Cy@P~h London, 1870,p. 53. For Dr. Dwight, see The New-EngZander, vol. xvi,
p. 465.
For the theological
article referred to as giving up the sacred theory, see
lic Library
College Library,
of Victoria.
For
the CycloPfldia of BibZicaZ, TheoZogicaZ, and
Ecdesiastical
Literature,
prepared
by
Rev. John McClintock,
D. D., and James Strong, New York, 1673, vol. v, p, 233.
For Arabic as an earlier Semitic development
than Hebrew, as well as for much
other valuable information
on the questions recently raised, see article Hebrew, by
W. R. Smith, in the latest edition of the Encyclopdia
Britannica.
For quotation
from Canon Farrar, see his Language
and Languages,
London, 1878, pp. 6, 7.
208
FROM BABEL
TO COMPARATIVE
PHILOLOGY.
legend, and parable seem, in obedience to a divine law, the
necessary setting for these truths, as they are successively
evolved, ever in higher and higher forms.
What matters it,
then, that we have come to know that the accounts of Creation, the Fall, the Deluge, and much else in our sacred books,
were remembrances
of lore obtained from the Chaldeans?
What matters it that the beautiful story of Joseph is found
to be in part derived from an Egyptian romance, of which
the hieroglyphs
may still be seen?
What matters it that the
story of David and Goliath is poetry ; and that Samson, like
so many men of strength
in other religions, is probably a
sun-myth?
What matters it that the inculcation
of high
duty in the childhood
of the world is embodied in such
quaint stories as those of Jonah and Balaam?
The more we
realize these facts, the richer becomes that great body of literature
brought together
within the covers of the Bible.
What matters it that those who incorporated
the Creation
lore of Babylonia
and other Oriental nations into the sacred
books of the Hebrews, mixed it with their own conceptions
and deductions?
What matters it that Darwin changed the
whole aspect of our Creation myths; that Lye11 and his compeers placed the Hebrew story of Creation and of the Delthat Copernicus put an end to
uge of Noah among legends;
the standing still of the sun for Joshua ; that Halley, in promulgating his law of comets, put an end to the doctrine of
&‘signs and wonders ” ; that Pine& in showing that all insanity is physical disease, relegated to the realm of mythology
the witch of Endor and all stories of demoniacal possession ;
that the Rev. Dr. Schaff, and a multitude of recent Christian
travellers in Palestine, have put into the realm of legend the
story of Lot’s wife transformed
into a pillar of salt ; that the
anthropologists,
by showing how man has risen everywhere
from low and brutal beginnings,
have destroyed
the whole
theological
theory of “ the fall of man “? Our great body of
sacred literature is thereby only made more and more valuable to us: more and more we see how long and patiently
the forces in the universe which make for righteousness
have been acting in and upon mankind through the only
agencies fitted for such work in the earliest ages of the world
-through
myth, legend, parable, and poem.
CHAPTER
XVIII.
FROMTHEDEADSEALEGENDS
MYTHOLOGY.
I. THE
GROWTH
OF EXPLANATORY
TOCOMPARATIVE
TRANSFORMATION
MYTHS.
A FEW years since, Maxime Du Camp, an eminent member of the French Academy, travelling from the Red Sea to
the Nile through the Desert of Kosseir, came to a barren
slope covered with boulders, rounded and glossy.
His Mohammedan
camel-driver
accounted
for them on
this wise:
I‘ Many years ago Hadji Abdul-Aziz, a sheik of the dervishes, was travelling
on foot through this desert: it was
summer : the sun was hot and the dust stifling ; thirst parched
his lips, fatigue weighed down his back, sweat dropped from
his forehead, when looking up he saw-on
this very spot-a
garden beautifully
green, full of fruit, and, in the midst of
it, the gardener.
“ ‘ 0 fellow-man,’
cried Hadji Abdul-Aziz, ‘in the name
of Allah, clement and merciful, give me a melon and I will
give you my prayers.’
“ The gardener answered : ‘ I care not for your prayers ;
give me money, and I will give you fruit.’
“ ‘ But, said the dervish, ‘ I am a beggar;
I have never
had money ; I am thirsty and weary, and one of your melons
is all that I need.’
“ ‘ No,’ said the gardener ; ‘go to the Nile and quench
your thirst.’
“Thereupon
the dervish, lifting his eyes toward heaven,
made this prayer : ‘ 0 Allah, thou who in the midst of the
desert didst make the fountain of Zem-Zem spring forth to
satisfy the thirst of Ismail, father of the faithful:
wilt thou
42
209
ZIODEAD
SE.4 LEGENDS
TO COMPARATIVE
suffer one of thy creatures
fatigue ? ’
“And
it came to pass
to perish
that,
spoken, when an abundant
dew
quenching
his thirst and refreshing
hardly
MYTHOLOGY.
thus
of thirst
and
had
the dervish
upon
him,
him even to the mar_
descended
row of his bones.
” NOW at the sight of this miracle the gardener knew that
the dervish was a holy man, beloved
of Allah, and straightway ‘offered him a melon.
“ ‘ Not so,’ answered Hadji Abdul-Aziz ; ‘ keep what thou
hast, thou wicked man.
May thy melons become as hard as
thy heart, and thy field as barren as thy soul ! ’
“ And straightway
it came to pass that the melons were
changed into these blocks of stone, and the grass into this
sand, and never since has anything grown thereon.”
In this story, and in myriads like it, we have a survival
of that early conception
of the universe in which so many of
the leading moral and religious truths of the great sacred
books of the world are imbedded.
All ancient sacred lore abounds in such mythical explanations of remarkable
appearances
in nature, and these are
most frequently prompted by mountains, rocks, and boulders
seemingly misplaced.
In India we have such typical examples among the Brahmans as the mountain-peak
which Durgu threw at Parvati;
and among the Buddhists the stone which Devadatti
hurled
at Buddha.
In Greece the Athenian, rejoicing in his belief that Athena
guarded her chosen people, found it hard to understand why
the great rock Lycabettus
should be just too far from the
Acropolis to be of use as an outwork;
but a myth was deto this, Athena had
veloped which explained all. According
intended to make Lycabettus
a defence for the Athenians, and
she was bringing it through the air from Pallene for that very
a raven met her and informed
purpose, - but, unfortunately,
her of the wonderful birth of Erichthonius,
which SO surprised
the goddess that she dropped the rock where it now stands.
So, too, a peculiar rock at 2Egina was accounted
for by
a long and circumstantial
legend to the effect that Peleus
threw it at Phocas.
I
GROWTH
OF
EXPLANATORY
TRANSFORMATION
MYTHS.
2II
A similar mode of explaining
such objects
is seen in the
mythologies
of northern
Europe.
In Scandinavia
we constantly
find rocks which tradition
accounts
for by declaring
that they were hurled
by the old gods at each other, or at
the early Christian
churches.
In Teutonic
lands, as a rule, wherever
a strange
rock
or stone is found, there will be found a myth or a legend,
heathen
or Christian,
to account
for it.
So, too, in Celtic
countries:
typical
of this mode of
thought
in Brittany
and in Ireland
is the popular
belief that
such features
in the landscape
were dropped
by the devil or
by fairies.
Even at a much later period such myths have grown and
bloomed.
Marco Polo gives a long and circumstantial
legend
of a mountain
in Asia Minor which, not long before his visit,
was removed
by a Christian
who, having
“faith
as a grain
of mustard
seed,” and remembering
the Saviour’s
promise,
transferred
the mountain
to its present
place by prayer,
“at
which marvel many Saracens
became Christians.”
*
Similar
mythical
explanations
are also found, in all the
older religions
of the world, for curiously
marked
meteoric
stones, fossils, and the like.
Typical
examples
are found in the imprint
of Buddha’s
feet on stones in Siam and Ceylon ; in the imprint
of the
body of Moses, which down to the middle of the last century
was shown near Mount Sinai ; in the imprint
of Poseidon’s
trident on the Acropolis
at Athens ; in the imprint
of the hands
* For
Maxime Du Camp, see Le ?Vit: &@te et flu&?, Paris, 1677, chapter v.
see Duncker, Geschichte des Alterthums, vol. iii, p. 366 ; also Coleman,
h+thoZogy of the Hindus,
p. 90.
For Greece, as to the Lycabettus
myth, see
Leake, iropogr@hy of Athens, vol. i, sec. 3 ; also Burnouf, La L.!geende Athlmbzne,
p. 152. For the rock at /Regina, see Charton, vol. i, p. 310. For Scandinavia,
see
Thorpe, Northern Antiquities,passinz.
For Teutonic countries, see Grimm, De&de
&fythoZogie ; Panzer, Beitrag zw deutschen MythoZogie, vol. ii ; Zingerle, Sagen aus
TyvoZ, pp. III et SPY., 488, 504, 543 ; and especially J. B. Friedrich,
Symbdih und
JfythoZogie a’er Natul; pp. 116 et seq. For Celtic examples I am indebted
to that
learned and genial scholar, Prof. J. P. Mahaffy, of Trinity College, Dublin.
See
also story of the devil dropping
a rock when forced by the archangel Michael to
aid him in building Mont Saint-Michel
on the west coast of France, in SCbillot’s
Traditions de Za Haute-Bretagne,
vol. i, p. 22 ; also multitudes
of other examples
in the same work.
For Marco Polo, see in Gryneus, p, 337 ; also Charton, Soyageurs anciens et modemes, tome ii, pp. 274 et q., where the legend is given in full.
For
India,
212
DEAD
SEA LEGENDS
TO COMPARATIVE
MYTHOLOGY.
or feet of Christ on stones in France, Italy, and Palestine;
in the imprint of the Virgin’s tears on stones at Jerusalem ;
in the imprint of the feet of Abraham at Jerusalem
and of
Mohammed on a stone in the Mosque of Khait Bey at Cairo;
in the imprint of the fingers of giants on stones in the Scandinavian Peninsula, in north Germany, and in western France ;
in the imprint of the devil’s thighs on a rock in Brittany, and
of his claws on stones which he threw at churches in Cologne
and Saint-Pol-de-Leon
; in the imprint of the shoulder of the
devil’s grandmother
on the “ elbow-stone ” at the Mohrinersee; in the imprint of St. Otho’s feet on a stone formerly
preserved in the castle church at Stettin;
in the imprint of
the little finger of Christ and the head of Satan at Ehrenberg; and in the imprint of the feet of St. Agatha at Catania, in Sicily.
To account
for these appearances
and
myriads of others, long and interesting
legends were developed, and out of this mass we may take one or two as
typical.
One of the most beautiful was evolved at Rome.
On the
border of the mediaeval city stands the church of “ Domine
quo vadis ” ; it was erected in honour of a stone, which is
still preserved,
bearing a mark resembling
a human footprint-perhaps
the bed of a fossil.
Out of this a pious legend grew as naturally as a wild
According
to this story, in one of the first
rose in a prairie.
great persecutions
the heart of St. Peter failed him, and he
attempted to flee from the city : arriving outside the walls
he was suddenly
confronted
by the Master, whereupon
Peter in amazement
asked, I‘ Lord, whither goest thou ? ”
(Domine quo vadis?); to which the Master answered, “ To
Rome, to be crucified
again.”
The apostle, thus rebuked,
returned to martyrdom ; the Master vanished, but left, as a
perpetual memorial, his footprint in the solid rock.
Another legend accounts for a curious mark in a stone at
According
to this, St. Thomas, after the ascenJerusalem.
sion of the Lord, was again troubled with doubts, whereupon the Virgin Mother threw down her girdle, which left
its imprint upon the rock, and thus converted
the doubter
fully and finally.
And still another example is seen at the very opposite
GROWTH
OF
EXPLANATORY
TRANSFORMATION
MYTHS.
2 13
extreme
of Europe,
in the legend of the priestess
of Hertha
She had been unfaithful
to her
in the island
of Rugen.
vows, and the gods furnished
a proof of her guilt by causing her and her child to sink into the rock on which she
stood.*
Another
and very fruitful
source of explanatory
myths is
found in ancient
centres
of volcanic
action, and especially
in
old craters
of volcanoes
and fissures filled with water.
In China we have, among
other
examples,
Lake Man,
which was once the site of the flourishing
city Chiang
Shuioverwhelmed
and sunk on account
of the heedlessness
of its
inhabitants
regarding
a divine warning.
In Phrygia,
the lake and morass
near Tyana
were as* For myths and legends crystallizing
about boulders and other stones curiously
shaped or marked, see, on the general subject, in addition to works already cited,
Des Brasses, Les D&x F&i&s,
1760, pas&n, but especially pp. 166, 167 ; and for
a condensed statement as to worship paid them, see Gerard de Rialle, MyUzoZogie
com$ar&, vol. vi, chapter ii. For imprints of Buddha’s feet, see Tylor, Researckes
into tke Early History of Mankind,
London, 1878, pp. 115 et seq. ; also Coleman,
p. 203, and Charton,
Voyageurs a&ens
et modernes, tome i, pp. 365, 366, where
engravings of one of the imprints, and of the temple above another, are seen. There
are five which are considered authentic by the Siamese, and a multitude
of others
more or less strongly insisted upon.
For the imprint of Moses’ body, see travellers
from Sir John Mandeville
down.
For the mark of Neptune’s
trident, see last
edition of Murray’s Handbook of Greece, vol. i, p. 322 ; and Burnonf, La Lt’gende
Atkhienne,
p. 153. For imprint of the feet of Christ, and of the Virgin’s girdle and
tears, see many of the older travellers in Palestine, as Arculf, Bouchard, Roger, and
especially Bertrandon
de la Brocquibre
in Wright’s collection, pp. 339, 340; also
Maundrell’s
Travel’s, and Mandeville.
For the curious legend regarding
the imprint of Abraham’s
foot, see Weil, Bi6Zixhe
Legenden
a’er MmeZm&nner, pp. 9~
et seq. For many additional
examples in Palestine, particularly
the imprints of the
bodies of three apostles on stones in the Garden of Gethsemane
and of St. Jerome’s
body in the desert, see Beauvau, ReZafion du Voyage a’u Levant, Nancy, 1615,
pas&z.
For the various imprints made by Satan and giants in Scandinavia
and
Germany, see Thorpe, vol. ii, p. 85 ; Friedrichs,
pp. 126 and pas&z.
For a very
rich collection of such explanatory legends regarding stones and marks in Germany,
see Karl Bartsch, Sagen, M&c&z
und Gebriiuclte aus Meklenburg,
Wien, 1880,
vol. ii, pp. 420 et sep. For a woodcut representing
the imprint of St. Agatha’s feet
the
at Catania, see Charton, as above, vol ii, p. 75. For a woodcut representing
imprint of Christ’s feet on the stone from which he ascended
to heaven, see woodcut in Mandeville, edition of 1484, in the White Library, Cornell University.
For
the legend of Domine quo vadis, see many books of travel and nearly all guide books
for Rome, from the mediaval MiraBiZia Rome to the latest edition of Murray.
The
footprints of Mohammed at Cairo were shown to the present writer in 1889. On
the general subject, with many striking examples, see Falsan, La PPriode glariaire,
Paris, 1889, pp. 17, 294, 295.
214
DEAD
SEA
LEGENDS
TO
COMPARATIVE
MYTHOLOGY.
cribed to the wrath of Zeus and Hermes,
who, having
visited the cities which formerly
stood there, and having
been refused shelter by all the inhabitants
save Philemon
and Baucis, rewarded their benefactors, but sunk the wicked
cities beneath the lake and morass.
Stories of similar import grew up to explain the crater
near Sipylos in Asia Minor and that of Avernus in Italy :
the latter came to be considered
the mouth of the infernal
regions, as every schoolboy
knows when he has read his
Virgil.
In the later Christian mythologies
we have such typical
legends as those which grew up about the old crater in
Ceylon ; the salt water in it being accounted
for by supposing it the tears of Adam and Eve, who retreated
to this
point after their expulsion from paradise and bewailed their
sin during a hundred years.
So, too, in Germany
we have multitudes
of lakes supposed to owe their origin to the sinking of valleys as a punishment for human sin. Of these are the “Devil’s
Lake,”
near Giistrow,
which rose and covered a church and its
priests on account of their corruption;
the lake at ProbstJesar, which rose and covered an oak grove and a number
of peasants resting in it on account of their want of charity
to beggars ; and the Lucin Lake, which rose and covered
a number of soldiers on account of their cruelty to a poor
peasant.
Such legends
are found throughout
America
and in
Japan, and will doubtless
be found throughout
Asia and
Africa, and especially
among the volcanic
lakes of South
America, the pitch lakes of the Caribbean Islands, and even
about the Salt Lake of Utah; for explanatory
myths and
legends under such circumstances
are inevitable.*
* As to myths explaining volcanic craters and lakes, and embodying ideas of
the wrath of Heaven against former inhabitants
of the neighbouring
country, see
conForbiger, AZte Ceographie, Hamburg,
1877, vol. i, p. 563. For exaggerations
cerning the Dead Sea, see ibid., vol. i, p. 575. For the sinking of Chiang Shui and
For the sinking of
other examples, see Denny’s FoZ.Uoore of China, pp. 126 et sq.
the Phrygian region, the destruction
of its inhabitants,
and the saving of Philemon
and Baucis, see Ovid’s Metanaorp~!oses, book viii ; alsoBiitticher, Baumru&~
der
A&n, etc. For the lake in Ceylon arising from the tears of Adam and Eve, see
variants of the original legend in Mandeville
and in Jiirgen Andersen, Reisebe-
GROWTH
OF
EXPLANATORY
TRANSFORMATION
MYTHS.
2
15
To the same manner of explaining
striking appearances
and especially
strange
rocks and
in physical
geography,
boulders,
we mainly owe the innumerable
stories of the
transformation
of living beings, and especially of men and
women, into these natural features.
In the mythology
of China we constantly
come upon
legends of such transformations-from
that of the first counsellor oPthe Han dynasty to those of shepherds
and sheep.
In the Brahmanic
mythology
of India, Salagrama,
the fossil
ammonite, is recognised
as containing
the body of Vishnu’s
wife, and the Binlang stone has much the same relation to
Siva; so, too, the nymph Ramba was changed, for offending
Ketu, into a mass of sand ; by the breath of Siva elephants
were turned into stone; and in a very touching myth LuxIn the
man is changed into stone but afterward
released.
Buddhist mythology a Nat demon is represented
as changing himself into a grain of sand.
Among the Greeks such transformation
myths come constantly before us-both
the changing
of stones to men and
the changing of men to stones.
Deucalion
and Pyrrha, escaping from the flood, repeopled the earth by casting behind
them stones which became men and women;
Heraulos was
changed
into stone for offending Mercury;
Pyrrhus
for
offending Rhea;
Phineus, and Polydectes
with his guests,
for offending Perseus:
under the petrifying
glance of Medusa’s head such transformations
became a thing of course.
To myth-making
in obedience to the desire of explaining
unusual natural appearances,
coupled with the idea that sin
must be followed by retribution,
we also owe the well-known
Niobe myth.
Having incurred the divine wrath, Niobe saw
those dearest to her destroyed by missiles from heaven, and
was finally transformed
into a rock on Mount Sipylos which
bore some vague resemblance
to the human form, and her
scAre&q-,
1669, vol. ii, p. 132. For the volcanic nature of the Deah Sea, see
Daubeny, cited in Smith’s Dit~ionary of the RidZe, s. v. PaZestine.
For lakes in Germany owing their origin to human sin and various supernatural
causes, see Karl
Bartsch, Sa~cn, Miirchen und Gebriiuc& aus MekZenburg, vol. i, pp. 397 esseq.
For lakes in America, see any good collection of Indian legends.
For lakes in
Japan sunk supernaturally,
see Braun’s Jupanesisrhe
M&c&?& und Sagen, Leipsic,
18%
PP. 350, 351.
216
DEAD
SEA LEGENDS
TO COMPARATIVE
MYTHOLOGY.
tears became the rivulets which trickled from the neighbouring strata.
Thus, in obedience to a moral and intellectual
impulse, a
striking
geographical
appearance
was explained,
and for
ages pious Greeks looked with bated breath upon the rock
at Sipylos which was once Niobe, just as for ages pious
Jews, Christians, and Mohammedans
looked with awe upon
the salt pillar at the Dead Sea which was once Lot’s wife.
Pausanias, one of the most honest of ancient travellers,
Having visited
gives us a notable exhibition of this feeling.
this monument
of divine vengeance
at Mount Sipylos, he
tells us very nafvely that, though he could discern no human
features when standing near it, he thought that he could
see them when standing at a distance.
There could hardly
be a better example of that most common and deceptive of
all things-belief
created by the desire to believe.
In the pagan mythology
of Scandinavia
we have such
typical examples as Biirs slaying the giant Ymir and transforming his bones into boulders ; also “ the giant who had
no heart ” transforming
six brothers
and their wives into
stone; and, in the old Christian
mythology,
St. Olaf changing into stone the wicked giants who opposed his preaching.
So, too, in Celtic countries
we have in Ireland such
legends as those of the dancers turned into stone; and, in
Brittany,
the stones at PlessC, which were once hunters and
dogs violating
the sanctity of Sunday;
and the stones of
Carnac, which were once soldiers who sought to kill St.
Cornely.
Teutonic
mythology
inherited
from its earlier Eastern
days a similar mass of old legends, and developed a still
greater mass of new ones. Thus, near the Konigstein, which
all visitors to the Saxon Switzerland know so well, is a boulder
which for ages was believed to have once been,a maiden transformed into stone for refusing to go to church;
and near
Rosenberg
in Mecklenburg
is another
curiously
shaped
stone of which a similar story is told.
Near Spornitz, in
the same region, are seven boulders whose forms and position are accounted for by a long and circumstantial
legend
that they were once seven impious herdsmen;
near Brahlsdorf is a stone which, according
to a similar explanatory
GROWTH
OF EXPLANATORY
TRANSFORMATION
MYTHS.
217
myth, was once a blasphemous
shepherd ; near Schwerin
are three boulders which were once wasteful servants;
and
at Neustadt, down to a recent period, was shown a collection of stones which were once a bride and bridegroom
with
their horses-all
punished for an act of cruelty ; and these
stories are but typical of thousands.
At the other extremity of Europe we may take, out of
the multitude of explanatory
myths, that which grew about
the well-known group of boulders near Belgrade.
In the
midst of them stands one larger than the rest: according
to
the legend which was developed
to account for all these,
there once lived there a swineherd, who was disrespectful
to
the consecrated
Host; whereupon he was changed into the
larger stone, and his swine into the smaller ones.
So also at
Saloniki we have the pillars of the ruined temple, which are
widely believed, especially
among the Jews of that region,
to have once been human beings, and are therefore
known
as the “ enchanted columns.”
Among the.Arabs
we have an addition to our sacred account of Adam-the
legend of the black stone of the Caaba
at Mecca, into which the angel was changed who was charged
by the Almighty
to keep Adam away from the forbidden
fruit, and who neglected
his duty.
Similar old transformation
legends are abundant among
the Indians of America, the negroes of Africa, and the natives
of Australia and the Pacific islands.
Nor has this making of myths to account for remarkable
appearances
yet ceased, even in civilized countries.
About the beginning of this century the Grand Duke of
Weimar, smitten with the classical mania of his time, placed
in the public park near his palace a little altar, and upon this
was carved, after the manner so frequent in classical antiquity,
a serpent taking a cake from it. And shortly there appeared,
in the town and the country round about, a legend to explain
this altar and its decoration.
It was commonly said that a
huge serpent had laid waste that region in the olden time,
until a wise and benevolent
baker had rid the world of the
monster by means of a poisoned biscuit.
So, too, but a few years since, in the heart of the State
of New York, a swindler of genius having made and buried
2 IS
DEAD
SEA
LEGENDS
TO
COMPARATIVE
MYTHOLOGY.
explained
it by declaring
a “ petrified
giant,” one theologian
it a Phoenician
idol, and published
the Phcenician
inscription
which he thought
he had found upon it; others
saw in it
proofs that “ there were giants
in those days,” and within a
week after its discovery
myths were afloat that the neighbouring
remnant
of the Onondaga
Indians
had traditions
of
giants who frequently
roamed through
that region.*
*
For transformation
myths
and legends,
identifying
rocks and stones with gods
and heroes, see Welcker,
G$%erZehrc, vol. i, p. 220.
For recent and more acces_
sible statements
for the general reader, see Robertson
Smith’s admirable LerZu~es
on ZZzeReZigion of the Semites, Edinburgh,
1889, pp. 86 et seq. For some thoughtful remarks on the ancient adoration of stones rather than statues, with reference
to the anointing
of the stones at Bethel by Jacob, see Dodwell, Tour Z&ough
Greece, vol. ii, p. 172 ; also Robertson
Smith as above, Lecture
V.
For Chinese
transformation
legends, see Denny’s I”oZRZo’oreof CZzino, pp. 96, 128.
For Hindu
and other ancient legends of transformations,
see Dawson, Dictionary
of Nina&
&&aoZogy
81-97, etc.
; also
Coleman as above ; also Cox, MylhoZogy of the Aryan Nations, pp.
For such transformations
in Greece, see the ZZ&z’, and Ovid as above ;
alsoStark,
Nio6e und die A’iobiden,
MyZZzoZ+e, pas&n ; also Baumeister,
cle ~io6e;
also Botticher
as above
p. 444 and elsewhere
DenkmiiZer
;
also Preller,
GriPr,%&Ae
des chzassiscken AZterthums,
arti-
;
also Curtius, GrierlriscAe Geschichte, vol. i,
naive confession regarding the Sipylos rock, see book
For Pausanius’s
pp. 71, 72.
i, p. 215.
See also Texier, Asie Mineure,
pp. 265 etsep. ; also Chandler,
Travels in
Gg*eece, vol. ii, p 80, who seems to hold to the later origin of the statue.
At the
end of Baumeister
there is an engraving copied from Stuart which seems to show
that, as to the Niobe
the general
subject,
legend,
at a later period Art was allowed
see Scheiffle,
Programm
des K. Gymnasiums
to help Nature.
For
ix EZZwangen : My-
For Scandinavian
and Teutonic
transformation
tkoZogische Parallehn,
1865.
legends, see Grimm, Deutsche MythoZogie, vierte Ausg., vol. i, p. 457 ; also Thorpe,
Northern
Antiquities
; also Friedrich, pas&z, especially pp. 116 et seq. ; also, for a
mass of very curious ones, Karl Bartsch, Sagen, M&cZze+z und Gebnitiurhe aus MekZenburg, vol. i, pp. 420 et q. ., also Karl Simrock’s edition of the Edda, ninth edition, p. 3rg : also John Fiske, MytZzs and Myth-Makers,
pp. 8, g. On the universality of such legends and myths, see Ritter’s Erdkunde,
vol. xiv, pp. 109%1122.
For
Irish examples, see Mans, ReaZ-EncycZop&die, article Stein ; and for multitudes
of
examples in Brittany,
see Sebillot,
Traditions de In Haute-Bretagne.
For the enchanted
columns
at Saloniki,
see the latest edition of Murray’s
Handbookof
Turkey,
For the legend of the angel changed into stone for neglecting
to
vol. ii, p. 711.
guard Adam, see Weil, university
librarian
at Heidelberg,
BibZircke Legende dey
Muselmiinner,
Frankfort-am-Main,
1845, pp. 37, 84. For similar transformation
legends in Australia
and among the American
Indians,
see Andrew
Lang, Mythology,
French translation,
pp. 83, 102 ; also his Myth, RituaZ, and Religion, vol. i, pp. 130
et seq., citing numerous examples from J. G. Miiller, UrreZigiotren, and Dorman’s
Primitive
Superstitions
for an African example,
in BPrenger-Feraud,
legend,
see Lewes,
:
also Report of tke Bureau of EthnoZogy for ISSO-‘81 ; and
see account of the rock at Balon which was once a woman,
Contespopulaires
Life
de la SPntgambie,
of Goethe, book iv.
chap. viii.
For the Weimar
For the myths which arose about the
GROWTH
OF
EXPLANATORY
TRANSFORMATION
MYTHS.
2’9
To the same stage of thought belongs the conception
of
human beings chaqged into trees.
But, in the historic evolution of religion and morality, while changes into stone or
rock were considered as punishments, or evidences of divine
wrath, those into trees and shrubs were frequently
looked
upon as rewards, or evidences of divine favour.
A very beautiful and touching form of this conception is
seen in such myths as the change of Philemon into the oak,
and of Baucis into the linden ; of h’fyrrha into the myrtle ; of
Melos into the apple tree ; of Attis into the pine ; of Adonis
into the rose tree ; and in the springing of the vine and grape
from the blood of the Titans, the violet from the blood of
Attis, and the hyacinth from the blood of Hyacinthus.
Thus it was, during the long ages when mankind saw
everywhere
miracle and nowhere law, that, in the evolution
of religion
and morality,
striking features in physical geography
became connected
with the idea of divine retribution.*
But, in the natural course of intellectual
growth, thinking men began to doubt the historical
accuracy
of these
myths and legends-or,
at least, to doubt all save those of
the theology in which they happened to be born; and the
next step was taken when they began to make comparisons
between the myths and legends of different neighbourhoods
and countries:
so came into being the science of comparative mythology-a
science sure to be of vast value, because,
despite many stumblings
and vagaries, it shows ever more
and more how our religion and morality have been gradually evolved, and gives a firm basis to a faith that higher
planes may yet be reached.
swindling “ Card% Giant ” in the State of New York, see especially an article by
G. A. Stockwell, M. D., in The PopuZw .Science
Month& for June, 1678 ; see also
W. A. McKinney
in The New-Enq%ana’e~ for October, 1875 ; and for the “ Phcenician inscription,”
given at length with a translation,
see the Rev. Alexander
~McWhorter, in T/u Galaxy for July, 1872. The present writer visited the “ giant ”
shortly after it was “ discovered,”
carefully observed it, and the myths to which it
gave rise, has in his possession a mass of curious documents regarding this fraud,
and hopes ere long to prepare a supplement
to Dr. Stockwell’s valuable paper.
* For the view taken in Greece and Rome of transformations
into trees and
shrubs, see Biitticher, Baumcultus
devU&nen,
book i, chap. xix ; also Ovid, Metamorpiroser, passim ; also foregoing notes.
220
DEAD
SEA LEGENDS
TO COMPARATIVE
MYTHOLOGY.
Such a science makes the sacred books of the world
more and more precious, in that it shows how they have
been the necessary envelopes of our highest spiritual sustenance: how even myths and legends apparently
the most
puerile have been the natural husks and rinds and shells of
our best ideas; and how the atmosphere
is created in which
these husks and rinds and shells in due time wither, shrivel,
and fall away, so that the fruit itself may be gathered to sustain a nobler religion and a purer morality.
The coming in of Christianity
contributed
elements of
inestimable
value in this evolution, and, at the centre of all,
the thoughts, words, and life of the Master.
But when, in
the darkness that followed the downfall of the Roman Empire, there was developed a theology and a vast ecclesiastical
power to enforce it, the most interesting
chapters in this
evolution of religion and morality were removed from the
domain of science.
So it came that for over eighteen
hundred years it has
been thought natural and right to study and compare the
myths and legends arising east and west and south and
north of Palestine with each other, but never with those of
Palestine itself ; so it came that one of the regions most fruitful in materials for reverent thought and healthful comparison was held exempt from the unbiased search for truth ; so
it came that, in the name of truth, truth was crippled for
ages.
While observation,
and thought upon observation,
and the organized knowledge or science which results from
these, progressed
as regarded
the myths and legends of
other countries, and an atmosphere
was thus produced
giving purer conceptions
of the world and its government,
myths of that little geographical
region at the eastern end of
the Mediterranean
retained possession of the civilized world
in their original crude form, and have at times done much
to thwart the noblest efforts of religion, morality, and civilization.
MEDIEVAL
II.
MEDIBVAL
GROWTH
GROWTH
OF THE
OF THE
DEAD
DEAD
SEA LEGENDS.
221
SEA LEGENDS.
The history of myths, of their growth under the earlier
phases of human thought and of their decline under modern
thinking, is one of the most interesting
and suggestive
of
human studies;
but, since to treat it as a whole would require volumes, I shall select only one small group, and out
of this mainly a single myth-one
about which there can no
longer be any dispute-the
group of myths and legends
which grew upon the shore of the Dead Sea, and especially
that one which grew up to account for the successive salt
columns washed out by the rains at its southwestern
extremity.
The Dead Sea is about fifty miles in length and ten miles
in width ; it lies in a very deep fissure extending
north and
south, and its surface is about thirteen hundred feet below
that of the hlediterranean.
It has, therefore,
no outlet, and
is the receptacle
for the waters of the whole system to which
it belongs, including
those collected
by the Sea of Galilee
and brought down thence by the river Jordan.
It certainly-or
at least the larger part of it-ranks
geologically among the oldest lakes on earth.
In a broad sense
the region is volcanic : on its shore are evidences of volcanic
action, which must from the earliest period have aroused
wonder and fear, and stimulated the myth-making
tendency
to account for them.
On the eastern side are impressive
mountain masses which have been thrown up from old volcanic vents ; mineral and hot springs abound, some of them
spreading
sulphurous
odours;
earthquakes
have been frequent, and from time to time these have cast up masses of
bitumen ; concretions
of sulphur and large formations of salt
constantly appear.
The water which comes from the springs
or oozes
through
the salt layers upon its shores constantly
brings
in various salts in solution, and, being rapidly evaporated
under the hot sun and dry wind, there has been left, in the
bed of the lake, a strong brine heavily charged with the
usual chlorides
and bromides-a
sort of bitter “ mother
liquor.”
This fluid has become so dense as to have a remarkable power of supporting the human body ; it is of an
.
222
DEAD
SEA
LEGENDS
TO
COMPARATIVE
MYTHOLOGY.
acrid and nauseating
bitterness;
and by ordinary eyes no
evidence of life is seen in it.
Thus it was that in the lake itself, and in its surrounding
shores, there was enough to make the generation
of explan_
atory myths on a large scale inevitable.
The main northern
part of the lake is very deep, the
plummet having shown an abyss of thirteen hundred feet;
but the southern end is shallow and in places marshy.
The system of which it forms a part shows a likeness to
that in South America of which the mountain lake Titicaca
is the main feature ; as a receptacle
for surplus waters, only
rendering
them by evaporation,
it resembles
the Caspian
and many other seas; as a sort of evaporating
dish for the
leachings
of salt rock, and consequently
holding a body
of water unfit to support the higher forms of animal life,
it resembles, among others, the Median lake of Urumiah;
as a deposit of bitumen, it resembles
the pitch lakes of
Trinidad.*
* For modern views of the Dead
BibZicaZ Researches, various editions
;
Voyage autour de la Mer Mwte
Bidk
Lands
;
and other
ing the character
monumental
travellers
of the whole
~erre, Paris, 1870, pp. 832-843
and especially as supplemented
veZZtQographie U&wseZ(e,
difference in depth between
Sea, see the Rev. Edward Robinson,
D D.,
Lynch’s Exploring
Exjedition ; De Saulcy,
Stanley’s
Pakvtine
hereafter
quoted.
region,
Voyage d’ExpZoration.
;
see the
For
atlas
and Syria ; Schaff’s T&z,gZ,
For goodpRotogravurps,
show_
forming
geographical
part
summaries,
of De
see
Luynes’s
Reclus,
La
; Ritter, Erdku=de,volumes
in Gage’s
translation
devoted to Palestine
with additions ; Reclus, Nou-
vol. ix, p. 736, where a small map is given presenting
the two ends of the lake, of which
the
SO much was made
For still better maps, see De Saulcy, and especially
before Lartet.
panoramic
views,
De Luynes, Voyage dExpZmatiffn
(atlas)+ For very interesting
For the geology, see
see last edition of Canon Tristram’s
Land of ZsraeZ, P. 635.
Lartet, in his reports to the French Geographical
Society, and especially in vol. iii
theologically
of De Luynes’s
etc.
”
worh, where
; alsoRitter
there
is an admirable
; also Sir J. W. Dawson’s
geological
and Syyia,
map with sections,
published
by the
Re-
D. D., Ge&Y
of PaZe&z:
;
For the meteorology,
and for pictures showing salt formation, Tristram,
as above.
see Vignes, report to De Luynes, pp. 65 et SPY. For chemistry of the Dead Sea, see
as above, and Terreil’s
report, given in Gage’s Ritter, vol. iii, appendix
2, and
For soiilogy of the Dead Sea, as to entire
tables in De Luynes’s
third volume.
absence of life in it, see all earlier travellers ; as to presence of lower forms of life,
See also reports in
see Ehrenberg’s
microscopic
examinations
in Gage’s Ritter.
ligious
Tract
Society
:
Egypt
also
Rev.
Cunningham
For botany
third volume of De Luynes.
ing “apples
of Sodom,” see Dr. Lortet’s
Ge’ographie, vol. ix, p. 737
;
Geikie,
of the Dead
Sea, and especially
Lo Syvie, p. 412;
also for photographic
also
representations
Reclus,
regardNouveZZe
of them, see port-
MEDLEVAL
GROWTH
OF
THE
DEAD
SEA
LEGENDS.
223
In all this there is nothing presenting any special difficulty
to the modern geologist
or geographer;
but with the early
dweller in Palestine the case was very different.
The rocky,
barren desolation
of the Dead Sea region impressed
him
deeply ; he naturally reasoned upon it; and this impression
and reasoning we find stamped into the pages of his sacred
literature,
rendering them all the more precious as a revelation of the earlier thought of mankind.
The long circumstantial account given in Genesis, its application in Deuteronomy, its use by Amos, by Isaiah, by Jeremiah,
by Zephaniah,
and by Ezekiel, the references
to it in the writings attributed
to St. Paul, St. Peter, and St. Jude, in the Apocalypse,
and,
above all, in more than one utterance of the Master himselfall show how deeply these geographical
features impressed
the Jewish mind.
At a very early period, myths and legends, many and circumstantial, grew up to explain features then so incomprehensible.
As the myth and legend grew up among the Greeks of a
refusal of hospitality to Zeus and Hermes by the village in
Phrygia, and the consequent sinking of that beautiful region
with its inhabitants beneath a lake and morass, so there came
belief in a similar offence by the people of the beautiful valley of Siddim, and the consequent sinking of that valley with
its inhabitants
beneath the waters of the Dead Sea.
Very
folio forming part of De Luynes’s work, plate 27. For Strabo’s very perfect description, see his Geog., lib. xvi, cap. ii ; also Fallmerayer,
We&?, pp. 177, 178. For
names and positions of a large number of salt lakes in various parts of the world
more or less resembling the Dead Sea, see De Luynes, vol. iii, pp. 242 et seq. For
Trinidad
“pitch lakes,” found by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1595, see Langegg, El
Dorado, part i, p. 103, and part ii, p. IOI ; also Reclus, Ritter, it aZ. For the general subject, see Schenkel, BibeLLexikan, s. v. To&s Metr, an excellent summary.
The description
of the Dead Sea in Lenormant’s
great history is utterly unworthy
of him, and must have been thrown together from old notes after his death.
It is
amazing to see in such a work the old superstition
that birds attempting
to fly over
the sea are suffocated.
See Lenormant,
N&&e
ancienne de Z’Urienf, edition of
1868, vol. vi, p. 112. For the absorption
and adoption of foreign myths’and legends
by the Jews, see Baring-Gould,
Curious Myths of the Middce Ages, p. 390.
For
the views of Greeks and Romans, see especially Tacitus, His~~oli@, book v, Pliny,
and Strabo, in whose remarks are the germs of many of the mediirval myths.
For
very curious examples of these, see Baierus, De 25rcidio Sodomcs, Halle, 1690,
pas&n.
224
DEAD
SEA LEGENDS
TO COMPARATIVE
MYTHOLOGY.
similar to the accounts of the saving of Philemon and Baucis
are those of the saving of Lot and his family.
But the myth-making and miracle-mongering
by no means
ceased in ancient times; they continued
to grow through
the medizeval and modern period until they have quietly
withered away in the light of modern scientific
investigation, leaving to us the religious
and moral truths they inclose.
It would be interesting
to trace this whole group of
myths : their origin in times prehistoric,
their development
in Greece and Rome, their culmination
during the ages of
faith, and their disappearance
in the age of science.
It
would be especially
instructive
to note the conscientious
efforts to prolong their life by making futile compromises
between science and theology regarding
them; but I shall
mention this main group only incidentally,
confining myself
almost entirely to the one above named-the
most remarkable of all-the
myth which grew about the salt pillars of
Usdum.
I select this mainly because it involves only elementary
principles,
requires no abstruse reasoning, and because all
controversy
regarding
it is ended.
There is certainly now
no theologian
with a reputation
to lose who will venture to
revive the idea regarding it which was sanctioned for hundreds, nay, thousands,
of years by theology, was based on
Scripture,
and was held by the universal Church until our
own century.
The main feature of the salt region of Usdum is a low
range of hills near the southwest corner of the Dead Sea, extending in a southeasterly
direction for about five miles, and
made up mainly of salt rock.
This rock is soft and friable,
and, under the influence of the heavy winter rains, it has
been, without doubt, from a period long before human history, as it is now, cut ever into new shapes, and especially
into pillars or columns, which sometimes bear a resemblance
to the human form.
An eminent clergyman
who visited this spot recently
speaks of the appearance of this salt range as follows :
“Fretted
by fitful showers and storms, its ridge is exceedingly uneven, its sides carved out and constantly chang-
’
MEDIAVAL
GROWTH
OF
THE
DEAD
SEA
LEGENDS.
225
might have a new pillar of salt
ing; . . . and each traveller
to wonder over at intervals of a few years.” *
Few things could be more certain than that, in the indolent dream-life of the East, myths and legends would grow
up to account for this as for other strange appearances in all
that region.
The question which a religious
Oriental put
to himself in ancient times at Usdum was substantially
that
which his descendant
to-day puts to himself at Kosseir:
‘6 Why is this region thus blasted ?” “ Whence these pillars
these blocks of granite?”
“ What
of salt?” or “ Whence
aroused the vengeance of Jehovah or of Allah to work these
miracles of desolation ? ”
And, just as Maxime Du Camp recorded
the answer of
the modern Shemite at Kosseir, so the compilers of the Jewish sacred books recorded the answer of the ancient Shemite
at the Dead Sea; just as Allah at Kosseir blasted the land
and transformed
the melons into boulders which are seen to
this day, so Jehovah
at Usdum blasted the land and transformed Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt, which is seen to this
day.
No more difficulty was encountered
in the formation of
the Lot legend, to account for that rock resembling
the human form, than in the formation of the Niobe legend, which
accounted for a supposed resemblance
in the rock at Sipy10s: it grew up just as we have seen thousands of similar
myths and legends grow up about striking natural appearances in every early home of the human race.
Being thus
consonant with the universal view regarding
the relation of
* As to the substance of the “ pillars ” or “ statues ” or “ needles * of salt at Usdum, many travellers speak of it as “marl and salt.”
Irby and Mangles, in their
TrcrveZs in Z?q_@t, NuBia, Syria, and t&e ZZoiy Land, chap. vii, call it “salt and
hardened sand.”
The citation as to frequent carving out of new “pillars”
is from
the TraveZs in Pa&z%
of the Rev. H. F. Osborn, D. D. ; see also Palmer, Desert
of tlte E.roa’us, vol. ii, pp. 478, 479. For engravings of the salt pillar at different
times, compare that given by Lynch in 1848, when it appeared
as a column forty
feet high, with that given by Palmer as the frontispiece
to his Des& of the Exodus,
Cambridge,
England, 1871, when it was small and “ does really bear a curious resemblance
to an Arab woman with a child upon her shoulders ” ; and this again
with the picture of the salt formation at Usdum given by Canon Tristram, at whose
visit there was neither “pillar”
nor “statue.”
See The Landof ZwaeZ, by H. B.
Tristram,
D. D., F. R. S., London, 1882, p. 324. For similar pillars of salt washed
out from the marl in Catalonia, see Lyell.
43
226
DEAD
SEA
LEGENDS
TO
COMPARATIVE
MYTHOLOGY.
physical geography
to the divine government,
it became a
treasure of the Jewish nation and of the Christian Churcha treasure not only to be guarded against all hostile intru-.
sion, but to be increased, as we shall see, by the myth-making powers of Jews, Christians, and Mohammedans
for thousands of years.
The spot where the myth originated
was carefully kept
in mind ; indeed, it could not escape, for in that place alone
were constantly seen the phenomena which gave rise to it.
We have a steady chain of testimony through the ages, all
pointing to the salt pillar as the irrefragable
evidence of
divine judgment.
That great theological
test of truth, the
dictum of St. Vincent of Lerins, would certainly prove that
the pillar was Lot’s wife, for it was believed so to be by Jews,
Christians, and Mohammedans
from the earliest period down
to a time almost within present memory-“always,
everywhere, and by all.”
It would stand perfectly
the ancient
test insisted upon by Cardinal
Newman,
“ Securus judicat
orbis terrarum.”
For, ever since the earliest days of Christianity,
the identity of the salt pillar with Lot’s wife has been universally
held and supported
by passages in Genesis, in St. Luke’s
Gospel, and in the Second Epistle of St. Peter-coupled
with
a passage
in the book of the Wisdom of Solomon, which to
this day, by a majority in the Christian Church, is believed
to be inspired, and from which are specially cited the words,
“A standing pillar of salt is a monument of an unbelieving
soul.” *
Never was chain of belief more continuous.
In the first
century of the Christian
era Josephus
refers to the miracle,
and declares regarding the statue, “ I have seen it, and it remains at this day “; and Clement, Bishop of Rome, one of
the most revered fathers of the Church, noted for the moderation of his statements, expresses a similar certainty, declaring the miraculous statue to be still standing.
* For the usual biblical citations, see Genesis xix, 26; St. Luke xvii, 32 ; I1
Peter ii, 6. For the citation from Wisdom, see chap. x. v. 7. For the account
of the transformation
of Lot’s wife put into its proper relations with the Jehovistic
and Elohistic documents, see Lenormant’s
La G&se, Paris, 1883, pp. 53, rgg, and
3’7, 318.
MEDLEVAL
GROWTH
OF THE
DEAD
SEA LEGENDS.
227
In the second century that great father of the Church,
bishop and martyr, Irenzeus, not only vouched for it, but
gave his approval to the belief that the soul of Lot’s wife
still lingered in the statue, giving it a sort of organic life:
thus virtually
began in the Church
that amazing
development of the legend which we shall see taking various
forms through
the Middle Ages-the
story that the salt
statue exercised
certain physical functions which in these
more delicate days can not be alluded to save under cover
of a dead language.
This addition to the legend, which in these signs of life,
as in other things, is developed
almost exactly on the same
lines with the legend of the Niobe statue in the rock of
Mount Sipylos and with the legends of human beings transformed into boulders in various mythologies,
was for centuries regarded
as an additional
confirmation
of revealed
truth.
In the third century the myth burst into still richer bloom
In this poem more
in a poem long ascribed
to Tertullian.
miraculous
characteristics
of the statue are revealed.
It
could not be washed away by rains; it could not be overthrown by winds ; any wound made upon it was miraculously
healed ; and the earlier statements as to its physical functions
were amplified in sonorous Latin verse.
With this appeared a new legend regarding
the Dead
Sea ; it became universally believed, and we find it repeated
throughout
the whole mediaeval period, that the bitumen
could only be dissolved by such fluids as in the processes of
animated nature came from the statue.
The legend thus amplified we shall find dwelt upon by
pious travellers
and monkish chroniclers
for hundreds
of
years : so it came to be more and more treasured by the universal Church, and held more and more firmly--”
always,
everywhere,
and by all.”
In the two following centuries we have an overwhelming
mass of additional authority for the belief that the very statue
of salt into which Lot’s wife was transformed
was still existing. In the fourth, the continuance of the statue was vouched
for by St. Silvia, who visited the place: though she could
not see it, she was told by the Bishop of Segor that it had
22~
DEAD
SEA
LEGENDS
TO
COMPARATIVE
MYTHOLOGY.
been there some time before, and she concluded that it had
been temporarily
covered by the sea.
In both the fourth
and fifth centuries
such great doctors in the Church as St.
Jerome,
St. John Chrysostom,
and St. Cyril of Jerusalem
agreed in this belief and statement;
hence it was, doubtless,
that the Hebrew word which is translated in the authorized
English version “ pillar,” was translated in the Vulgate, which
the majority of Christians
believe virtually inspired, by the
word ‘6 statue ” ; we shall find this fact insisted upon by
theologians
arguing in behalf of the statue, as a result and
monument of the miracle, for over fourteen hundred years
afterward.*
About the middle of the sixth century Antoninus Martyr
visited the Dead Sea region and described it, but curiously
reversed a simple truth in these words : “ Nor do sticks or
straws float there, nor can a man swim, but whatever is cast
As to the statue of Lot’s wife,
into it sinks to the bottom.”
he threw doubt upon its miraculous
renewal, but testified
that it was still standing.
In the seventh century the Targum of Jerusalem
not only
testified that the salt pillar at Usdum was once Lot’s wife,
but declared that she must retain that form until the general
In the seventh century, too, Bishop Arculf
resurrection.
travelled
to the Dead Sea, and his work was added to the
treasures of the Church.
He greatly develops the legend,
and especially that part of it given by Josephus.
The bitugold and the form
men that floats upon the sea “ resembles
of a bull or camel ” ; ‘I birds can not live near it ” ; and “ the
very beautiful apples ” which grow there, when plucked,
<‘burn and are reduced to ashes, and smoke as if they were
still burning.”
In the eighth century the Venerable
Bede takes these
* See Josephus, Antiquities, book i, chap. xi ; Clement, Epist. I; Cyril Hieros,
Catech., xix ; Chrysostom, Horn. XY111, XLIY, in Genes. ; Irenreus, lib. iv, c. xxxi,
of his Heresies, edition Oxon., 1702. For St. Silvia, see S. SiZ& Aquifane Pereg&tat& ad_Loca Sancta, Rowe, 1887, p. 55 ; alsoedition of 1885, p. 25. For recent
translation, see PiZg&zage
of St. SiZvia, p. zS, in publications of Palestine Text Society for 1891. For legends of signs of continued
life in boulders and stones into
which human beings have been transformed
for sin, see Karl Bartsch, Sagen, etc.,
vol. ii, pp. 420 et SPY.
MEDIEVAL
GROWTH
OF
THE
DEAD
SEA
LEGENDS.
229
statements
of Arculf and his predecessors,
binds them together in his work on The Holy PCnces, and gives the whole
mass of myths and legends an enormous impulse.*
In the tenth century new force is given to it by the pious
Speaking
of the town of Segor, near
Moslem Mukadassi.
of its
the salt region, he says that the proper translation
name is “ Hell ” ; and of the lake he says, “ Its waters are
hot, even as though the place stood over hell-fire.”
In the crusading
period, immediately
following, all the
legends burst forth more brilliantly
than ever.
The first of these new travellers
who makes careful statements is Fulk of Chartres, who in 1100 accompanied
King
Baldwin
to the Dead Sea and saw many wonders;
but,
though he visited the salt region at Usdum, he makes no
mention of the salt pillar: evidently
he had fallen on evil
times ; the older statues had probably
been washed away,
and no new one had happened to be washed out of the rocks
just at that period.
But his misfortune was more than made up by the triumphant experience
of a far more famous traveller, half a century later-Rabbi
Benjamin of Tudela.
Rabbi Benjamin
finds new evidences
of miracle in the
Dead Sea, and develops to a still higher point the legend of
the salt statue of Lot’s wife, enriching
the world with the
statement
that it was steadily and miraculously
renewed ;
that, though the cattle of the region licked its surface, it
never grew smaller.
Again a thrill of joy went through the
monasteries
and pulpits of Christendom
at this increasing
“evidence
of the truth of Scripture.”
Toward the end of the thirteenth
century there appeared
in Palestine
a traveller
superior
to most before or sinceCount Burchard,
monk of Mount Sion.
He had the advantage of knowing something of Arabic, and his writings show
* For Antoninus
Martyr, see Tobler’s edition of his work in the Itizera, vol. i,
IOO, Geneva, 1877.
For the Targum of Jerusalem,
see citation in Quaresmius,
Trrwc .Sanct~~ Elucidatio, Peregrinatio
vi, cap. xiv ; new Venice edition.
For Arculf, see Tobler.
For Bede, see his De Locis Sanrtis in Tobler’s I&era,
vol. i, p.
228.
For an admirable
statement of the mediseval theological
view of scientific
research, see Eicken, GeschicRte der mitteZaZterZichen Wdtanschauung, Stuttgart,
1887, chap. vi.
p.
230
DEAD
SEA LEGENDS
TO COMPARATIVE
MYTHOLOGY.
him to have been observant
and thoughtful.
No statue of
Lot’s wife appears to have been washed clean of the salt
rock at his visit, but he takes it for granted that the Dead
Sea is “ the mouth of hell,” and that the vapour rising from
it is the smoke from Satan’s furnaces.
These ideas seem to have become part of the common
stock, for Ernoul, who travelled
to the Dead Sea during
the same century,
always speaks of it as the (‘Sea of
Devils.”
Near the beginning
of the fourteenth
century appeared
the book of far wider influence which bears the name of Sir
John Mandeville,
and in the various editions of it myths and
legends of the Dead Sea and of the pillar of salt burst forth
into wonderful luxuriance.
This book tells us that masses of fiery matter are every
day thrown up from the water “ as large as a horse ” ; that,
though it contains no living thing, it has been shown that
men thrown into it can not die; and, finally, as if to prove
the worthlessness
of devout testimony to the miraculous,
he
“
And
whoever
throws
a
piece
of
iron
therein,
it
floats;
says :
and whoever throws a feather therein, it sinks to the bottom ;
and, because that is contrary to nature, I was not willing to
believe it until I saw it.”
The book, of course, mentions Lot’s wife, and says that
the pillar of salt “ stands there to-day,” and “ has a right
salty taste.”
Injustice
has perhaps been done to the compilers of this
famous work in holding them liars of the first magnitdde.
They simply abhorred scepticism, and thought it meritorious
The ideal Mandeville
was a
to believe all pious legends.
man of overmastering
faith, and resembled
Tertullian
in
“because
they
are
impossible
“;
he
believing
some things
was doubtless entirely conscientious;
the solemn ending of
the book shows that he listened, observed, and wrote under
the deepest conviction,
and those who re-edited
his book
were probably just as honest in adding the later stories of
pious travellers.
The Travels of Sir John L’llnna’eviZZt, thus appealing to the
popular heart, were most widely read in the monasteries
and
Innumerable
copies were made
repeated among the people.
MEDUEVAL
GROWTH
OF
THE
DEAD
SEA
LEGENDS.
231
manuscript, and finally in print, and so the old myths received a new life.*
In the fifteenth century wonders increased.
In 1418 we
have the Lord of Caumont,
who makes a pilgrimage
and
gives us a statement which is the result of the theological
reasoning of centuries, and especially interesting
as a typical
example of the theological
method in contrast with the scientific.
He could not understand how the blessed waters of
the Jordan could be allowed to mingle with the accursed
In spite, then, of the eye of sense,
waters of the Dead Sea.
he beheld the water with the eye of faith, and calmly announced that the Jordan water passes through the sea, but
that the two masses of water are not mingled.
As to the
salt statue of Lot’s wife, he declares it to be still existing;
and, copying a table of indulgences
granted by the Church
to pious pilgrims, he puts down the visit to the salt statue as
giving an indulgence
of seven years.
Toward the end of the century we have another traveller
yet more influential: Bernard of Breydenbach,
Dean of Mainz.
His book of travels
was published in 1486, at the famous
press of Schoeffer, and in various translations it was spread
His
through Europe, exercising
an influence wide and deep.
first important notice of the Dead Sea is as follows : ‘( In this,
in
* For Fulk of Chartres
and crusading
Dei and the French Z&cueiZ ; also histories
ler, and others
; see also Robinson,
travellers
generally,
see Bongars’
of the Crusades by Wilken, Sybel,
Biblical
Researc&
Gesta
Kug-
vol. ii, p. 109, and Tobler,
BibZiog~*aphia Geographica Pahtine,
1867, p. IZ. For Benjamin
of Tudela’s statement, see Wright’s
CoZZection of Travels in PaZeTestine,p. 84, and Asheis edition of
Benjamin
of Tudela’s
Borchard
or Burchard,
Grynrrus,
Za C&a?
Nov. Ordis, Basil., 1532, fol. 298, 329.
Hifrusalent,
in Michelant
and Raynaud,
et IJ~P
SiPcZes.
Gamurrini,
editions,
Rome,
especially
well’s reprint
For
travels,
vol. i, pp. 71, 72 ; also
see full
Petrus
1887,
text
Charton,
vol. i, p. 180.
in the Z?~yssbuc~ dess Ueyligen
Diaconus,
_&an&s
For
; also
For Emoul,
see his L’Estat
de
Ztin&aires
FranFakes
au ~.wnc
see his book
De
Lock
Sands,
edited
by
pp. 126, 127.
those
For Mandeville
I have compared several
in the ReyssbucA, in Canisius, and in Wright, with Halli.
and with the rare Strasburg
edition
of 1484 in the Cornell
University
Library : the whole statement
regarding
the experiment
with iron and feathers is
given differently in different copies.
The statement
that he saw the feathers sink
and the iron swim is made in the Reyssduch edition, Frankfort,
1584.
The story,
like the saints’ legends, evidently grew as time went on, but is none the less inter.
esting
as showing
the general
to find my view of Mandeville’s
by Mr. Gage in his edition
credulity.
honesty
of Ritter’s
Since writing the above I have been
confirmed by the Rev, Dr. Robinson,
Palestine.
glad
and
’
232
DEAD
SEA LEGENDS
TO COMPARATIVE
MYTHOLOGY.
Tirus the serpent is found, and from him the Tiriac medicine
is made.
He is blind, and so full of venom that there is no
remedy for his bite except cutting off the bitten part.
He
can only be taken by striking
him and making him angry ;
then his venom flies into his head and tail.”
Breydenbach
calls the Dead Sea “the chimney of hell,” and repeats the
He,
old story as to the miraculous
solvent for its bitumen.
too, makes the statement
that the holy water of the Jordan
does not mingle with the accursed water of the infernal sea,
but increases the miracle which Caumont had announced by
saying that, although the waters appear to come together,
the Jordan is really absorbed in the earth before it reaches
the sea.
As to Lot’s wife, various travellers at that time had various fortunes.
Some, like Caumont and Breydenbach,
took
her continued existence for granted ; some, like Count John
of Solms, saw her and mere greatly edified ; some, like Hans
Werli, tried to find her and could not, but, like St. Silvia, a
thousand years before, were none the less edified by the idea
that, for some inscrutable
purpose, the sea had been allowed
to hide her from them ; some found her larger than they expected, even forty feet high, as was the salt pillar which
happened to be standing at the visit of Commander Lynch
in 1848; but this only added a new proof to the miracle, for
the text was remembered,
“ There were giants in those days.”
Out of the mass of works of pilgrims during the fifteenth
century I select just one more as typical of the theological
view then dominant,
and this is the noted book of Felix
I select him, because even
Fabri, a preaching friar of Ulm.
so eminent an authority
in our own time as Dr. Edward
Robinson
declares
him to have been the most thorough,
thoughtful, and enlightened
traveller of that century.
Fabri is greatly impressed
by the wonders of the Dead
Sea, and typical of his honesty influenced by faith is his account of the Dead Sea fruit ; he describes it with almost perfect accuracy, but adds the statement that when mature it is
“ filled with ashes and cinders.”
As to the salt statue, he says: “ We saw the place between the sea and Mount Segor, but could not see the statue
itself because we were too far distant to see anything of
MEDIEVAL
GROWTH
OF
THE
DEAD
SEA
LEGENDS.
233
human size; but we saw it with firm faith, because we believed Scripture,
which speaks of it; and we were filled with
wonder.”
To sustain absolute faith in the statue he reminds his
readers that “ God is able even of these stones to raise up
and goes into a long argument, discussseed to Abraham,”
ing such transformations
as those of King Atlas and Pygmalion’s statue, with a multitude of others, winding up with
the case, given in the miracles of St. Jerome, of a heretic who
was changed into a log of wood, which was then burned.
He gives a stat.ement of the Hebrews
that Lot’s wife received her peculiar punishment because she had refused to
add salt to the food of the angels when they visited her, and
he preaches a short sermon in which he says that, as salt is
the condiment of food, so the salt statue of Lot’s wife “ gives
us a condiment of wisdom.” *
There were, indeed, many discrepancies
in the testimony
of travellers regarding
the salt pillar-so
many, in fact, that
at a later period the learned Dom Calmet acknowledged
that they shook his belief in the whole matter; but, during
this earlier time, under the complete sway of the theological
spirit, these difficulties
only gave new and more glorious
opportunities
for faith.
For, if a considerable
interval occurred between the washing of one salt pillar out of existence and the washing of another into existence, the idea arose that the statue, by virtue
of the soul which still remained in it, had departed on some
mysterious
excursion.
Did it happen that one statue was
washed out one year in one place and another statue another
year in another place, this difficulty was surmounted by beDid it happen that
lieving that Lot’s wife still walked about.
a salt column was undermined
by the rains and fell, this was
* For Bernard of Breydenbach,
I have used the Latin edition, Mentz, 1486, in
the White collection, Cornell University,
also the German edition in the ReyssbucA.
For John of Solms, Werli, and the like, see the Z?eyss6uc& which gives a full text of
their travels.
For Fabri (Schmid), see, for his value, Robinson ; also Tobler, BibLiographia, pp. 53 et seq. ; and for texts, see Reyssbuch, pp. 122b et seq., but best the
Fmt~is
FeL Fabri Evagatorium, ed. Hassler,
Stuttgart,
1843, vol. iii, pp. 172 et
se*. His book has now been translated
into English by the Palestine
Pilgrims’
Text Society.
2j4
I
:;
ti
DEAD
SEA
LEGENDS
TO
COMPARATIVE
MYTHOLOGY.
believed to be but another sign of life.
Did a pillar happen
to be covered in part by the sea, this was enough to arouse
the belief that the statue from time to time descended
into
the Dead Sea depths-possibly
to satisfy that old fatal curi.
osity regarding
her former neighbours.
Did some smaller
block of salt happen to be washed out near the statue, it was
believed that a household dog, also transformed
into salt,
had followed her back from beneath the deep.
Did more
statues than one appear at one time, that simply made the
mystery more impressive.
In facts now so easy of scientific
explanation
the theologians found wonderful matter for argument.
One great question among them was whether the soul of
Lot’s wife did really remain in the statue.
On one side it was
insisted that, as Holy Scripture
declares that Lot’s wife was
changed into a pillar of salt, and as she was necessarily made
up of a soul and a body, the soul must have become part of
This argument was clinched by citing that pasthe statue.
sage in the Book of Wisdom in which the salt pillar is declared to be still standing as “ the monument of an unbelieving SOUL” On the other hand, it was insisted that the soul of
the woman must have been incorporeal
and immortal, and
hence could not have been changed into a substance corporeal and mortal.
Naturally,
to this it would be answered
that the salt pillar was no more corporeal than the ordinary
materials of the human body, and that it had been made miraculously immortal, and ‘( with God all things are possible.”
Thus were opened long vistas of theological
discussion.*
As we enter the sixteenth
century the Dead Sea myths,
and especially the legends of Lot’s wife, are still growing.
In 1507 Father Anselm of the Minorites
declares that the
sea sometimes
covers the feet of the statue, sometimes
the
legs, sometimes the whole body.
In 1555, Gabriel
Giraudet,
priest
at Puy, journeyed
His faith was robust, and his attitude
through
Palestine.
toward the myths of the Dead Sea is seen by his declaration
* For a brief statement of the main arguments for and against the idea that the
soul of Lot’s wife remained
within the salt statue, see Cornelius a Lapide, Comrnentarius in Pentaatcuchum, Antwerp, 1697, chap. xix.
MEDIWVAL
GROWTH
OF
THE
DEAD
SEA
LEGENDS.
235
that its waters are so foul that one can smell them at a distance of three leagues;
that straw, hay, or feathers thrown
into them will sink, but that ir?n and other metals will float ;
that
criminals
have been kept in them three or four days
As to Lot’s wife, he says that he
and could not drown.
found her “ lying there, her back toward heaven, converted
into salt stone ; for I touched her, scratched her, and put a
piece of her into my mouth, and she tasted salt.”
At the centre of all these legends we see, then, the idea
that, though there were no living beasts in the Dead Sea,
the people of the overwhelmed
cities were still living beneath its waters, probably in hell; that there was life in the
salt statue ; and that it was still curious regarding
its old
neighbours.
Hence such travellers
in the latter years of the century
as Count Albert of Liiwenstein
and Prince Nicolas Radziwill are not at all weakened in faith by failing to find the
statue.
What the former is capable of believing is seen by his
statement
that in a certain cemetery at Cairo during one
night in the year the dead thrust forth their feet, hands,
limbs, and even rise wholly from their graves.
The
There seemed, then, no limit to these pious beliefs.
idea that there is merit in credulity, with the love of mythmaking and miracle-mongering,
constantly made them larger.
Nor did the Protestant
Reformation
diminish them at first ;
it rather strengthened
them and fixed them more firmly in
the popular mind.
They seemed destined to last forever.
How they were thus strengthened
at first, under Protestantism, and how they were finally dissolved away in the atmosphere of scientific thought, will now be shown.*
* For Father Anselm, see his Descriptio
Terre Sanct~, in H. Canisius, The~awu~ Monument. &cZes., Basnage edition, Amsterdam,
1725, vol. iv, p. 788.
For
Giraudet,
see his Discours du Voyage d’Ozriw-Mer, Paris, 1585, p. 56a.
For
Radziwill and Lbwenstein,
see the Reyss6ucL, especially p. rg8a.
236
III.
DEAD
SEA
LEGENDS
POST-REFORMATION
LEGENDS.-BEGINNINGS
TO
COMPARATIVE
CULMINATION
OF
A
MYTHOLOGY.
OF
HEALTHFUL
THE
DEAD
SEA
SCEPTICISM.
The first effect of the Protestant
Reformation
was to
popularize
the older Dead Sea legends, and to make the
public mind still more receptive for the newer ones.
Luther’s great pictorial
Bible, so powerful in fixing the
ideas of the German people, showed by very striking engrav.
ings all three of these earlier myths-the
destruction
of the
cities by fire from heaven, the transformation
of Lot’s wife,
and the vile origin of the hated Moabites and Ammonites;
and we find the salt statue, especially, in this and other pictorial Bibles, during generation after generation.
Catholic
peoples also held their own in this display of
faith.
About I5 17 Franqois Regnault
published at Paris a
compilation
on Palestine
enriched with vroodcuts : in this
the old Dead Sea legend of the “ serpent Tyrus ” reappears
embellished,
and with it various other new versions of old
Five years later Bartholomew
de Salignac
travels
stories.
in the Holy Land, vouches for the continued existence
of
the Lot’s wife statue, and gives new life to an old marvel by
insisting that the sacred waters of the Jordan are not really
poured into the infernal basin of the Dead Sea, but that they
are miraculously
absorbed by the earth.
These ideas were not confined to the people at large ; we
trace them among scholars.
In 1581, Btinting, a North German professor and theologian, published
his Itinerary of Holy Scrzjmwe, and in this
the Dead Sea and Lot legends continue to increase.
He
tells us that the water of the sea “ changes three times every
day ” ; that it “ spits forth fire ” ; that it throws up “ on high ”
great foul masses which “ burn like pitch ” and “ swim about
like huge oxen ” ; that the statue of Lot’s wife is still there,
and that it shines like salt.
In 1590, Christian
Adrichom,
a Dutch theologian,
pubHe does not
lished his famous work on sacred geography.
insist upon the Dead Sea legends generally,
but declares
that the statue of Lot’s wife is still in existence, and on his
map he gives a picture of her standing at Usdum.
_ Nor was it altogether
safe to dissent from such beliefs.
POST-REFORMATION
CULMINATION.
237
Just
as, under the papal sway, men of science
were
severely
punished for wrong views of the physical geography
of the earth in general, so, when Calvin decided to
burn Servetus, he included in his indictment
for heresy a
charge that Servetus, in his edition of Ptolemy, had made
unorthodox statements regarding the physical geography
of
Palestine.*
Protestants
and Catholics
vied with each other in the
Thus, in his Most Devout Journey,
making of new myths.
published in 1608, Jean Zvallart, Mayor of Ath in Hainault,
confesses himself troubled by conflicting
stories about the
salt statue, but declares himself sound in the faith that “ some
vestige of it still remains,” and makes up for his bit of freethinking by adding a new mythical horror to the region6‘ crocodiles,”
which, with the serpents and the “ foul odour
of the sea,” prevented his visit to the salt mountains.
In IGI~ Father Jean Boucher publishes the first of many
editions of his Sacred Bouquet of the Hoty Lam’.
He depicts
the horrors of the Dead Sea in a number of striking antitheses, and among these is the statement
that it is made of
mud rather than of water, that it soils whatever is put into
it, and so corrupts the land about it that not a blade of grass
grows in all that region.
In the same spirit, thirteen years later, the Protestant
Christopher
Heidmann
publishes his Palczstina, in which he
speaks of a fluid resembling
blood oozing from the rocks
about the Dead Sea, and cites authorities
to prove that the
statue of Lot’s wife still exists and gives signs of life.
Yet, as we near the end of the sixteenth
century, some
* For biblical engravings showing Lot’s wife transformed into a salt statue, etc.,
see Luther’s Bibk, 1534, p. xi ; also the pictorial EZectoml Bib.& ; also Merian’s
/rows Biblice of 1625 ; also the frontispiece
of the Luther Bible published
at
Nuremberg
in 1708 ; also Scheuchzer’s
Kupfeer-Bibcl, Augsburg,
1731, Tab. lxxx.
For the account of the Dead Sea serpent “ Tyrus,” etc., see Le Grand Voyage a2
Hierusakm,
Paris (1517 ?), p. xxi. For De Salignac’s assertion regarding
the salt
pillar and suggestion regarding the absorption
of the Jordan
before reaching the
Dead Sea, see his Ztinerarium
Sacr~ Scripturr~, Magdeburg,
1593. 96 34 and 38.
For Bunting, see his Ztinerarium &cm Scriptw~, Magdeburg,
1589, pp. 78. 79.
For Adrichom’s
picture of the salt statue, see map, p. 38, and text, p. 208, of his
Z%at~um
Terre
Sapzct~, 1613. For Calvin and Serve&,
see Willis, Servptlcs
and CaZz&, pp. 96, 307 ; also the Servetus edition of Ptolemy.
238 DEAD SEA LEGENDS
TO COMPARATIVE
MYTHOLOGY.
evidences of a healthful and fruitful scepticism
begin to appear.
The old stream of travellers,
commentators,
and preachers, accepting tradition and repeating what they have been
told, flows on ; but here and there we are refreshed
by the
sight of a man who really begins to think and look for
himself.
First among these is the French naturalist Pierre B&on.
As regards the ordinary wonders, he had the simple faith of
his time.
Among a multitude of similar things, he believed
that he saw the stones on which the disciples were sleeping
during the prayer of Christ;
the stone on which the Lord
sat when he raised Lazarus from the dead ; the Lord’s footprints on the stone from which he ascended into heaven ; and,
most curious of all, “ the stone which the builders rejected.”
Yet he makes some advance on his predecessors,
since he
shows in one passage that he had thought out the process by
which the simpler myths of Palestine were made.
For, between Bethlehem and Jerusalem, he sees a field covered with
small pebbles, and of these he says: “The common people
tell you that a man was once sowing peas there, when Our
Lady passed that way and asked him what he was doing;
the man answered, ‘ I am sowing pebbles,’ and straightway
all the peas were changed into these little stones.”
His ascribing
belief in this explanatory
transformation
myth to the “common
people ” marks the faint dawn of a
new epoch.
Typical
also of this new class is the German botanist
Leonhard
Rauwolf.
He travels through Palestine in 1575,
and, though devout and at times credulous, notes comparatively few of the old wonders, while he makes thoughtful
and careful mention of things in nature that he really saw ;
he declines to use the eyes of the monks, and steadily uses
his own to good purpose.
As we go on in the seventeenth
century, this current of
new thought
is yet more evident;
a habit of observing
more carefully and of comparing
observations
had set in ;
the great voyages
of discovery
by Columbus,
Vasco da
Gama, Magellan, and others were producing
their effect ;
and this effect was increased
by the inductive
philosophy
POST-REFORMATION
CULMINATION.
239
of Bacon, the reasonings
of Descartes,
and the suggestions
of Montaigne.
So evident was this current that, as far back as the early
days of the century, a great theologian, Quaresmio
of Lodi,
had made up his mind to stop it forever.
In 1616, therefore, he began his ponderous
work entitled T/e His~oricnl,
Theological,
mad Mod
Exphznation
of
the
HoZy Land.
He
laboured upon it for nine years, gave nine years more to
perfecting
it, and then put it into the hands of the great
publishing
house of Plantin at Antwerp:
they were four
years in printing
and correcting
it, and when it at last appeared it seemed certain to establish the theological
view
While taking abundant care
of the Holy Land for all time.
of other myths which he believed sanctified
by Holy Scripture, Quaresmio devoted himself at great length to the Dead
Sea, but above all to the salt statue: and he divides his chapter
on it into three parts, each headed by a question:
First,
“ HOZUwas Lot’s wife changed into a statue of salt ? ” secand, thirdly,
ondly, “ lV/z~~ewas she thus transformed?”
‘I Dots that statue still exist ?”
Through
each of these divisions he fights to the end all who are inclined to swerve
in the slightest
degree
from the orthodox
opinion.
He
utterly refuses to compromise
with any modern theorists.
To all such he says, “ The narration of Moses is historical
and is to be received in its natural sense, and no right-thinkTO those who favoured the figuraing man will deny this.”
any pastive interpretation
he says, “ With such reasonings
sage of Scripture
can be denied.”
As to the spot where the miracle occurred, he discusses
four places, but settles upon the point where the picture of
the statue is given in Adrichom’s
map. As to the continued
existence of the statue, he plays with the opposing view as a
cat fondles a mouse; and then shows that the most revered
ancient authorities,
venerable
men still living, and the Bedouins, all agree that it is still in being.
Throughout
the
whole chapter his thoroughness
in scriptural
knowledge
and his profundity in logic are only excelled by his scorn
for those theologians
who were willing to yield anything
to
rationalism.
So powerful was this argument
that it seemed to carry
,
240
DEAD
SEA LEGENDS
TO COMPARATIVE
MYTHOLOGY.
the Roman
everything
before it, not merely throughout
obedience, but among the most eminent theologians
of Protestantism.
As regards the Roman Church, we may take as a type
the missionary priest Eugene Roger, who, shortly after the
appearance of Quaresmio’s
book, published his own travels
in Palestine.
He was an observant man, and his work counts
among those of real value ; but the spirit of Quaresmio had
taken possession of him fully.
His work is prefaced with a
map showing the points of most importance
in scriptural
history, and among these he identifies the place where Samson slew the thousand Philistines
with the jawbone of an
ass, and where he hid the gates of Gaza; the cavern which
Adam and Eve inhabited
after their expulsion from para.
dise ; the spot where Balaam’s ass spoke ; the tree on which
Absalom was hanged ; the place where Jacob wrestled with
the angel; the steep place where the swine possessed
of
devils plunged into the sea; the spot where the prophet
Elijah was taken up in a chariot of fire; and, of course, the
position of the salt statue which was once Lot’s wife.
He
not only indicates places on land, but places in the sea ; thus
he shows where Jonah was swallowed
by the whale, and
“ where St. Peter caught one hundred and fifty-three fishes.”
As to the Dead Sea miracles generally, he does not dwell
he evidently felt that Quaresmio
on them at great length;
but he shows largely the fruits
had exhausted
the subject;
of Quaresmio’s
teaching in other matters.
So, too, we find the thoughts and words of Quaresmio
echoing afar through the German universities,
in public disquisitions, dissertations,
and sermons.
The great Bible commentators, both Catholic and Protestant, generally agreed in
accepting them.
But, strong as this theological
theory was, we find that,
as time went on, it required to be braced somewhat, and in
1692 Wedelius, Professor
of Medicine
at Jena, chose as the
subject of his inaugural address The Physiology of the Destruction of Sodom ad
of the Statue of Sak
It is a masterly example of “ sanctified science.”
At great
length he dwells on the characteristics
of sulphur, salt, and
thunderbolts’;
mixes up scriptural texts, theology, and chem-
POST-REFORMATION
CULMINATION.
241
istry after a most bewildering
fashion ; and finally comes to
the conclusion
that a thunderbolt,
flung by the Almighty,
calcined the body of Lot’s wife, and at the same time vitrified its particles into a glassy mass looking like salt.*
Not only were these views demonstrated,
so far as theologico-scientific
reasoning
could demonstrate
anything, but
it was clearly shown, by a continuous
chain of testimony
from the earliest ages, that the salt statue at Usdum had
been recognised
as the body of Lot’s wife by Jews, Mohammedans, and the universal
Christian
Church, “ always,
everywhere,
and by all.”
Under the influence of teachings
like these-and
of the
winter rains-new
wonders began to appear at the salt pillar.
In 1661 the Franciscan
monk Zwinner published his travels
in Palestine, and gave not only most of the old myths regarding
the salt statue, but a new one, in some respects
more striking than any of the old-for
he had heard that a
dog, also transformed
into salt, was standing by the side of
Lot’s wife.
Even the more solid Benedictine
scholars were carried
away, and we find in the Sacytd History by Prof. Mezger, of
the order of St. Benedict,
published in 1700, a renewal of
the declaration
that the salt statue must be a “perpetual
memorial.”
*For Zvallart, see his T~t?s-dPuot Voyage de 1erusaZe7em, Antwerp, 1608, book iv,
chapter viii.
His journey was made twenty years before.
For Father Boucher,
see his Rouguet de h T’twv Saincte,Paris, 1622, pp. 447, 448. For Heidmann,
see his P&z&q
1689, pp. 58-62.
For B~lon’s credulity in matters referred to,
see his 06sevvntions de Phsieuvs
.%guhdez,
etc., Paris, 1553, pp. x41-144 ; and
for the legends of the peas changed into pebbles, p. 145 ; see also Lartet in De
Luynes, vol. iii, p. II. For Rauwolf, see the A’eyssZuuh, and Tobler, Bibliographic.
For a good account of the influence of Montaigne
in developing French scepticism,
see PrCvost-I’aradol’s
study on Montaigne
prefixed to the Le Clerc edition of the
Essays, Paris, 1865 : also the well-known
passages
in Lecky’s Rutionalism
in
Europe.
For Quaresmio I have consulted both the Plantin edition of 1639 and the
superb new Venice edition of 1880-‘82.
The latter, though less prized by book
fanciers, is-the more valuable, since it contains some very interesting recent notes.
For the above discussion, see Plantin edition, vol. ii, pp. 758 et seq., and Venice
edition, vol. ii, pp. 572-574.
As to the effect of Quaresmio
on the Protestant
Church, see Wedelius, De Stntzu SaZis, Jenre, 1692, pp. 6, 7, and elsewhere.
For
Eugene Roger, see his La Terre Saincte, Paris, 1661; the map, showing various
sites referred to, is in the preface ; and for basilisks, salamanders,
etc., see pp. 89-92,
139, 218, and elsewhere.
44
242
DEAD
SEA LEGENDS
TO COh’IPARATIVE
MYTHOLOGY.
But it was soon evident that the scientific
current was
still working beneath this ponderous
mass of theological
authority.
A typical evidence of this we find in 1666 in the
travels of Doubdan, a canon of St. Denis.
As to the Dead
Sea, he says that he saw no smoke, no clouds, and no “ black,
sticky water ” ; as to the statue of Lot’s wife, he says, LLThe
moderns do not believe so easily that she has lasted so long ” ;
then, as if alarmed at his own boldness, he concedes that the
sea “ay be black and sticky in the middle; and from Lot’s
wife he escapes under cover of some pious generalities.
Four years later another French ecclesiastic,
Jacques Goujon, referring in his published travels to the legends of the
salt pillar, says : “ People may believe these stories as much
as they choose;
I did not see it, nor did 1 go there.”
So,
too, in 1697, Morison, a dignitary of the French
Church,
having travelled in Palestine, confesses that, as to the story
of the pillar of salt, he has difficulty in believing it.
The same current is observed working still more strongly
in the travels of the Rev. Henry Maundrell, an English chaplain at Aleppo, who travelled through Palestine
during the
same year.
He pours contempt
over the legends of the
Dead Sea in general : as to the story that birds could not
Ay over it, he says that he saw them flying there; as to the
utter absence of life in the sea, he saw small shells in it; he
saw no traces of any buried cities;
and as to the stories
regarding the statue of Lot’s wife and the proposal to visit
it, he says, “ Nor could we give faith enough to these reports
to induce us to go on such an errand.”
The influence of the Baconian philosophy on his mind is
very clear; for, in expressing
his disbelief in the Dead Sea
apples, with their contents
of ashes, he says that he saw
none, and he cites Lord Bacon in support of scepticism
on
this and similar points.
But the strongest
effect of this growing
scepticism
is
seen near the end of that century, when the eminent Dutch
commentator
Clericus (Le Clerc) published his commentary
on the Pentateuch
and his Dissertation on the Statue of SaZt.
At great lengt,h he brings all his shrewdness and learning
to bear against the whole legend of the actual transformation
of Lot’s wife and the existence of the salt pillar, and ends by
POST-REFORMATION
CULMINATION.
243
saying that ‘(the whole story is due to the vanity of. some
and the credulity of more.”
In the beginning of the eighteenth
century we find new
tributaries
to this rivulet
of scientific
thought.
In 1701
Father
Felix Beaugrand
dismisses
the Dead Sea legends
and the salt statue very curtly and dryly-expressing
not
his belief in it, but a conventional
wish to believe.
In 1709 a scholar appeared
in another part of Europe
and of different faith, who did far more than any of his
predecessors
to envelop the Dead Sea legends in an atmos.
phere of truth-Adrian
Reland, professor at the University
of Utrecht.
His work on Palestine is a monument of patient
scholarship,
having as its nucleus a love of truth as truth :
there is no irreverence
in him, but he quietly brushes away
a great mass of myths and legends:
as to the statue of Lot’s
wife, he treats it warily, but applies the comparative
method
to it with killing effect, by showing that the story of its
miraculous renewal is but one among many of its kind.*
Yet to superficial observers
the old current of myth and
marvel seemed to flow into the eighteenth century as strong
as ever, and of this we may take two typical evidences.
The
first of these is the Pious Pi&v-image of Vincent Briemle.
His
journey
was made about 1710; and his work, brought out
under the auspices of a high papal functionary
some years
later, in a heavy quarto, gave new life to the stories of the
hellish character
of the Dead Sea, and especially
to the
miraculous renewal of the salt statue.
In 1720 came a still more striking effort to maintain the
old belief in the north of Europe, for in that year the eminent theologian
Masius published his great treatise on T’e
Conversion of Lot’s Wtjre ido a Statue of Salt.
Evidently
intendin, m that this work should be the last
* For Zwinner, see his BZumenbuch
de3 HeyZigen Landes, Miinchen, 1661, p.
454. For Mezger, see his Sacra Hi&via, Augsburg, 1700, p. 30. For Doubdan,
see his Voyage de Za Terre-Sainte, Paris, 1670, pp. 338, 339 ; also Tobler and Gage’s
Kitter.
For Gonjon, see his Histoire et Voyage de la Terre Sainck, Lyons, 1670,
p. 230, etc. For Morison, see his Voyage, book ii, pp. 516, 517. For Maundrell,
see in Wright’s CoZZection,pp. 383 et seq. For Clericus, see his Dissertn& de SaZis
Status, in his Pentateuch,
edition of 1696, pp. 327 et sep. For Father Beaugrand,
Utrecht,
see his vaya,y, Paris, 17Or, pp. 137 et seq. For Reland, see his Pakdina,
1714, vol. i, pp. Or-z54,passim.
244
DEAD
SEA
LEGENDS
TO
COMPARATIVE
MYTHOLOGY.
word on this subject in Germany,
as Quaresmio
had imagined that his work would be the last in Italy, he develops
his subject after the high scholastic
and theologic
manner.
Calling attention
first to the divine command in the New
Testament,
“Remember
Lot’s wife,” he argues through a
long series of chapters.
In the ninth of these he discusses
‘( the imn@Zing cause ” of her looking back, and introduces us
to the question, formerly
so often treated by theologians,
whether the soul of Lot’s wife was finally saved.
Here we
are glad to learn that the big, warm heart of Luther lifted
him above the common herd of theologians,
and led him to
declare that she was “a faithful and saintly woman,” and
that she certainly was not eternally damned.
In justice to
the Roman Church also it should be said that several of her
most eminent commentators
took a similar view, and insisted that the sin of Lot’s wife was venial, and therefore, at the worst, could only subject her to the fires of purgatory.
The eIeventh chapter discusses
at length the question
]ZOWshe was converted into salt, and, mentioning
many theoiogical opinions, dwells especially upon the view of Rivetus,
that a thunderbolt,
made up apparently of fire, sulphur, and
salt, wrought
her transformation
at the same time that it
blasted the land ; and he bases this opinion upon the twentyninth chapter
of Deuteronomy
and the one hundred and
seventh Psalm.
Later, Masius presents
a sacred scientific
theory that
“saline particles entered into her until her whole body was
infected ” ; and with this he connects another piece of sanctified science, to the effect that “ stagnant bile ” may have rendered the surface of her body ‘( entirely shining, bitter, dry,
and deformed.”
Finally, he comes to the great question whether the salt
pillar is still in existence.
On this he is full and fair.
On
one hand he allows that Luther thought that it was involved
in the general destruction
of Sodom and Gomorrah,
and he
cites various travellers who had failed to find it ; but, on the
other hand, he gives a long chain of evidence to show that
it continued to exist:
very wisely he reminds the reader
that the positive testimony of those who have seen it must
POST-REFORMATION
CULMINATION.
245
outweigh the negative testimony of those who have not, and
he finally decides that the salt statue is still in being.
No doubt a work like this produced a considerable
effect
in Protestant
countries;
indeed, this effect seems evident as
far off as England, for, in 1720, we find in Dean Prideaux’s
Old and Nezv Tesiamed connected a map on which the statue
So, too, in Holland, in the
of salt is carefully
indicated.
Sucrrd
Geograp/zy published at Utrecht
in 1758 by the theologian Bachiene,
we find him, while showing many signs of
rationalism,
evidently
inclined to the old views as to the
existence
of the salt pillar; but just here comes a curious
evidence
of the real direction
of the current
of thought
through the century, for, nine years later, in the German
translation of Bachiene’s
work we find copious notes by the
translator in a far more rationalistic
spirit ; indeed, we see
the dawn of the inevitable
day of compromise,
for we now
have, instead of the old argument
that the divine power by
one miraculous act changed Lot’s wife into a salt pillar, the
suggestion that she was caught in a shower of sulphur and
saltpetre,
covered by it, and that the result was a lump,
which in a general
way is cnZZedin our sacred books “a
pillar of salt.” *
But, from the middle of the eighteenth
century, the new
current
sets through
Christendom
with ever-increasing
strength.
Very interesting
is it to compare the great scriptural commentaries
of the middle of this century with those
published a century earlier.
Of the earlier ones we may take Matthew Poole’s Synopsis as a type: as authorized
by royal decree in 1667 it contains very substantial arguments
for the pious belief in the
statue.
Of the later ones we may take the edition of the
noted commentary
of the Jesuit Tirinus seventy years later:
while he feels bound to present the authorities,
he evidently
endeavours to get rid of the subject as speedily as possible
* For Briemle, see his Anddc~tige
De
Uxore
Lothi
in Statuam
Sdis
Pil’gPrfahrf,
p, rzg.
For Mask, see his
conversa, Hafniz, 1720, especially pp. q-31.
For Dean Prideaux, see his OZd and New Testament connected in z%e Uisfory
of de Jews, 1720, map at page 7. For Bachiene, see his Nistm-isc~e mad geegraph&he
Beschreibung
mm PaZmtina,
Leipzig, 1766, vol. i, pp. 11%IZO, and
notes.
246 DEAD SEA LEGENDS
TO COMPARATIVE
MYTHOLOGY.
under cover of conventionalities
; of the spirit of Quaresmio
he shows no trace.*
About 1760 came a strikin g evidence of the strength
of
this new current.
The Abate Mariti then published
his
book upon the Holy Land ; and of this book, by an Italian
ecclesiastic,
the most eminent of German bibliographers
in
this field says that it first broke a path for critical study of
the Holy Land.
Mariti is entirely sceptical
as to the sinking of the valley of Siddim and the overwhelming
of the
He speaks kindly of a Capuchin
Father who saw
cities.
everywhere
at the Dead Sea traces of the divine malediction, while he himself could not see them, and says, “ It is
because a Capuchin carries everywhere
the five senses of
faith, while I only carry those of nature.”
He speaks of
“the lies of Josephus,”
and makes merry over “ the rude
and shapeless block ” which the guide assured him was the
statue of Lot’s wife, explaining
the want of human form in
the salt pillar by telling him that this complete metamorphosis was part of her punishment.
About twenty years later, another remarkable
man, Volney, broaches
the subject in what was then known as the
“ philosophic ” spirit.
Between
the years 1783 and 1785 he
made an extensive journey through the Holy Land and published a volume of travels which by acuteness
of thought
and vigour of style secured general
attention.
In these,
myth and legend were thrown aside, and we have an account simply dictated by the love of truth as truth.
He,
too, keeps the torch of science
burning by applying
his
geological
knowledge to the regions which he traverses.
As we look back over the eighteenth
century
we see
mingled with the new current of thought, and strengthening
it, a constantly increasing
stream of more strictly scientific
observation
and reflection.
To review it briefly : in the very first years of the century
hiaraldi showed the Paris Academy of Sciences
fossil fishes
found in the Lebanon region;
a little later, Cornelius Bruyn,
in the French edition of his Eastern travels, gave well-drawn
* For Poole (Polus) see his .Sjmopsis, 1669, p. 17’3 ; and for Tirinus,
edition of his Comnreztu~,
1736, p. IO.
the Lyons
BEGINNINGS
OF SCEPTICISM.
247
representations
of fossil fishes and shells, some of them from
the region of the Dead Sea; about the middle of the century Richard
Pococke, Bishop of Meath, and Korte of Altona made more statements
of the same sort; and toward
the close of the century, as we have seen, Volney gave still
more of these researches,
with philosophical
deductions
from them.
The result of all this was that there gradually dawned
upon thinking men the conviction
th.at, for ages before the
appearance
of man on the planet, and during all the period
since his appearance, natural laws have been steadily in force
in Palestine
as elsewhere;
this conviction
obliged men to
consider other than supernatural
causes for the phenomena
of the Dead Sea, and myth and marvel steadily shrank in
value.
But at the very threshold
of the nineteenth
century
Chateaubriand
came into the field, and he seemed to banish
the scientific spirit, though what he really did was to conceal
it temporarily
behind the vapours of his rhetoric.
The time
was propitious for him.
It was the period of reaction after
the French Revolution,
when what was called religion was
again in fashion, and when even atheists supported
it as a
good thing for common people: of such an epoch Chateaubriand, with his superficial
information,
thin sentiment, and
showy verbiage, was the foreordained
prophet.
His enemies
were wont to deny that he ever saw the Holy Land ; whether he did or not, he added nothing to real knowledge,
but
simply threw a momentary glamour over the regions he described, and especially over the Dead Sea.
The legend of
Lot’s wife he carefully avoided, for he knew too well the
danger of ridicule in France.
As long as the Napoleonic
and Bourbon
reigns lasted,
and indeed for some time afterward,
this kind of dealing
with the Holy Land was fashionable, and we have a long
series of men, especially
of Frenchmen,
who evidently
received their impulse from Chateaubriand.
About 1831 De, Geramb, Abbot of La Trappe, evidently
a very noble and devout spirit, sees vapour above the Dead
Sea, but stretches
the truth a little-speaking
of it as ‘( vapour or smoke.”
He could not find the salt statue, and com-
q8
DEAD
SEA
LEGENDS
TO
COMPARATIVE
MYTHOLOGY.
plains of the ‘(diversity
of stories regarding
it.”
The simple physical cause of this diversity-the
washing out of different statues in different years-never
occurs to him ; but
he comforts
himself with the scriptural
warrant
for the
metamorphosis.*
But to the honour of scientific men and scientific truth it
should be said that even under Napoleon and the Bourbons
there were men who continued to explore, observe, and describe with the simple love of truth as truth, and in spite of
the probability
that their researches
would be received during their lifetime with contempt
and even hostility, both in
church and state.
The pioneer in this work of the nineteenth
century was
He began his main
the German naturalist Ulrich Seetzen.
investigation
in 1806, and soon his learning, courage, and
honesty
threw a flood of new light into the Dead Sea
questions.
In this light, myth and legend faded more rapidly than
Typical of his method is his examination of the Dead
ever.
He found, on reaching
Palestine, that Josephus’s
Sea fruit.
story regarding
it, which had been accepted
for nearly two
thousand years, was believed
on all sides; more than this,
he found that the original myth had so grown that a multitude of respectable
people at Bethlehem
and elsewhere
assured him that not only apples, but pears, pomegranates,
figs, lemons, and many other fruits which grow upon the
shores of the Dead Sea, though beautiful to look upon, were
These good people declared to Seetzen
filled with ashes.
that they had seen these fruits, and that, not long before, a
basketful of them which had been sent to a merchant
of
Jaffa had turned to ashes.
Seetzen was evidently
perplexed
by this mass of testi* For Mariti, see his Voyage, etc., vol. ii, pp. 352-356.
For Tobler’s high
opinion of him, see the BibZiqmphia,
pp. 132, 133. For Volney, see his Jbyage
en Syria et .Eppte, Paris, 1807, vol. i, pp. 308 et q. ; also, for a statement of contributions of the eighteenth centnry to geology, Lartet in De Luynes’s Mer Morte,
vol. iii, p. 12.
For Cornelius
Bruyn, see French edition of his works, ,714 (in
which his name is given as “ Le Brun “), especially for representations
of fossils,
see his Voyage, etc., vol. ii, part iii. For De
PP. 30% 375. For Chateaubriand,
Geramb, see his Voyage, vol. ii, pp. 45-47.
BEGINNINGS
OF
SCEPTICISM.
249
mony and naturally atixious to examine these fruits.
On
arriving at the sea he began to look for them, and the guide
soon showed him the “apples.“’
These he found to be simply an ascZPpia, which had been described
by LinnEus, and
which is found in the East Indies, Arabia, Egypt, Jamaica,
and elsewhere-the
ii ashes ” being simply seeds.
He looked
next for the other fruits, and the guide soon found for him
to be a species of solathe “ lemons ” : these he discovered
nugn found in other parts of Palestine and elsewhere, and the
He looked next
seeds in these were the famous “ cinders.”
for the pears, figs, and other accursed fruits; but, instead of
finding them filled with ashes and cinders, he found them
like the same fruits in other lands, and he tells us that he ate
the figs with much pleasure.
So perished a myth which had been kept alive two thousand years,-partly
by modes of thought natural to theologians, partly by the self-interest of guides, and partly by the
love of marvel-mongering
among travellers.
The other myths fared no better.
,4s to the appearance
of the sea, he found its waters not “black and sticky,” but
blue and transparent ; he found no smoke rising from the
abyss, but tells us that sunlight and cloud and shore were
pleasantly reflected
from the surface.
As to Lot’s wife, he
found no salt pillar which had been a careless
woman, but
the Arabs showed him many boulders which had once been
wicked men.
His work was worthily continued
by a long succession
of true investigators,-among
them such travellers
or geographers
as Burckhardt,
Irby, Mangles, Fallmerayer,
and
Carl von Raumer:
by men like these the atmosphere
of
myth and legend was steadily cleared away ; as a rule, they
simply forgot Lot’s wife altogether.
In this noble succession
should be mentioned an American theologian,
Dr. Edward Robinson,
professor at New
York.
Beginning
about 1826, he devoted himself for thirty
years to the thorough
study of the geography
of Palestine,
and he found a worthy
coadjutor
in another
American
divine, Dr. Eli Smith.
Neither
of these men departed
openly from the old traditions : that would have cost a
heart-breaking
price-the
loss of all further
opportunity
250
DEAD
SEA
LEGENDS
TO
COMPARATIVE
MYTHOLOGY.
carry on their researches.
Robinson did not even think
it best to call attention
to the mythical
character
of much
on which his predecessors
had insisted;
he simply brought
in, more and more, the dry, clear atmosphere
of the love
of truth for truth’s sake, and, in this, myths and legends
steadily
disappeared.
By doing this he rendered
a far
greater service to real Christianity
than any other theologian had ever done in this field.
Very characteristic
is his dealing with the myth of Lot’s
wife.
Though
more than once at Usdum,-though
giving
valuable information
regarding
the sea, shore, and mountains there, he carefully avoids all mention of the salt pillar
and of the legend which arose from it. In this he set an
example followed by most of the more thoughtful
religious
travellers
since his time.
Very significant
is it to see the
New Testament injunction, “ Remember
Lot’s wife,” so utterly forgotten.
These later investigators
seem never to have
heard of it; and this constant forgetfulness
shows the change
which had taken .place in the enlightened
thinking of the
world.
But in the year 1848 came an episode very striking in its
character and effect.
At that time, the war between the United States and
Lynch,
of the United
Mexico
having closed, Lieutenant
States Navy, found himself in the port of Vera Cruz, commanding an old hulk, the Su$$y.
Looking about for sotnething to do, it occurred
to him to write to the Secretary
of the Navy asking permission
to explore the Dead Sea.
Under ordinary circumstances
the proposal would doubtless
have been strangled with red tape ; but, fortunately, the Secretary at that time was Mr. John Y. Mason, of Virginia.
Mr. Mason was famous for his good nature.
Both at Washington and at Paris, where he was afterward
minister, this
predominant
trait has left a multitude of amusing traditions ;
it was of him that Senator
Benton said, “ To be supremely
happy he must have his paunch full of oysters and his hands
full of cards.”
The Secretary
granted permission,
but evidently
gave
the matter not another thought.
As a result, came an expedition the most comical and one of the most rich in results
to
.
r
BEGINNINGS
OF SCEPTICISM.
251
to be found in American
annals.
Never was anything
so
Lieutenant
Lynch
started with his hulk,
happy-go-lucky.
with hardly an instrument
save those ordinarily found on
shipboard, and with a body of men probably the most unfit
for anything
like scientific investigation
ever sent on such
an errand ; fortunately,
he picked up a young instructor
in
mathematics,
Mr. Anderson, and added to his apparatus two
strong iron boats.
Arriving, after a tedious voyage,
on the coast of Asia
Minor, he set to work:
He had no adequate preparation in
general’ history, archaeology, or the physical sciences ; but he
had his American
patriotism, energy, pluck, pride, and devotion to duty, and these qualities stood him in good stead.
With great labour he got the iron boats across the country.
Then the tug of war began.
First of all investigators,
he
forced his way through the whole length of the river Jordan
and from end to end of the Dead Sea.
There were constant
difficulties-geographical,
climatic, and personal ; but Lynch
cut through them all.
He was brave or shrewd, as there
Anderson
proved an admirable
help&, and towas need.
gether they made surveys of distances, altitudes, depths, and
sundry simple investigations
in a geological,
mineralogical,
and chemical way.
Much was poorly done, much was left
undone, but the general result was most honourable both to
Lynch and Anderson ; and Secretary
Mason found that his
easy-going
patronage
of the enterprise was the best act of
his official life.
The results of this expedition
on public opinion were
most curious.
Lynch was no scholar in any sense ; he had
travelled little, and thought less on the real questions underlying the whole investigation;
as to the difference in depth
of the two parts of the lake, he jumped-with
a sailor’s disregard of logic-to
the conclusion
that it somehow proved
the mythical account of the overwhelming
of the cities, and
he indulged in reflections of a sort probably suggested
by
his recollections
of American Sunday-schools.
Especially
noteworthy
is his treatment
of the legend of
Lot’s wife.
He found the pillar of salt.
It happened to be
at that period a circular column of friable salt rock, about
forty feet high ; yet, while he accepts every other old myth,
252
DEAD
SEA LEGENDS
TO COMPARATIVE
MYTHOLOGY.
he treats the belief that this was once the wife of Lot as Sta
superstition.”
One little circumstance
added enormously
to the influence of this book, for, as a frontispiece,
he inserted a picture
of the salt column.
It was delineated
in rather a poetic
manner: light streamed upon it, heavy clouds hung above
it, and, as a background,
were ranged buttresses of salt rock
furrowed and channelled out by the winter rains: this salt
statue picture was spread far and wide, and in thousands of
country pulpits and Sunday-schools
it .was shown as a tribute
of science to Scripture.
Nor was this influence
confined to American
Sundayschool children : Lynch had innocently set a trap into which
several
European
theologians
stumbled.
One of these
was Dr. Lorenz Gratz, Vicar-General
of Augsburg, a theological professor.
In the second edition of his Theatreof t/le
Ho& Scr$tures, published in 1858, he hails Lynch’s discovery
of the salt pillar with joy, forgets his allusion to the old theory regarding
it as a superstition, and does not stop to learn
that this *as one of a succession of statues washed out yearly
by the rains, but accepts it as the original Lot’s wife.
The French churchmen suffered most.
About two years
after Lynch, De Saulcy visited the Dead Sea to explore it
thoroughly,
evidently in the interest of sacred science-and
Of the modest thoroughness
of Robof his own promotion.
inson there is no trace in his writings.
He promptly
discovered
the overwhelmed
cities, which no one before or
since has ever found, poured contempt
on other investigators, and threw over his whole work an air of piety.
But,
unfortunately,
having a Frenchman’s
dread of ridicule, he
attempted to give a rationalistic
explanation of what he calls
L6the enormous
needles of salt washed out by the winter
with the Lot’s wife myth, and
rain,” and their connection
declared his firm belief that she, “ being delayed by curiosity
or terror, was crushed by a rock which rolled down from
the mountain, and when Lot and his children turned about
they saw at the place where she had been only the rock of
salt which covered her body.”
But this would not do at all, and an eminent ecclesiastic
privately and publicly expostulated
with De Saulcy-very
BEGINNINGS
OF SCEPTICISM.
253
naturally declaring that “it was not Lot who wrote the book
of Genesis.”
The result was that another edition of De Saulcy’s work
was published by a Church Book Society, with the offending passage omitted ; but a passage was retained really far
more suggestive
of heterodoxy,
and this was an Arab legend
accounting
for the origin of certain rocks near the Dead Sea
This in effect ran as
curiously resembling
salt formations.
follows :
“ Abraham, the friend of God, having come here one day
with his mule to buy salt, the salt-workers
impudently told
him that they had no salt to sell, whereupon
the patriarch
said : ‘ Your words are true ; you have no salt to sell,’ and
instantly the salt of this whole region was transformed
into
stone, or rather into a salt which has lost its savour.”
Nothing could be more sure than this story to throw
light into the mental and moral process by which the salt
pillar myth was originally created.
In the years 1864 and 1865 came an expedition on a much
His
more imposing
scale : that of the Due de Luynes.
knowledge
of archaeology
and his wealth were freely devoted to working the mine which Lynch had opened, and,
taking with him an iron vessel and several savants, he devoted himself especially
to finding the cities of the Dead
Sea, and to giving less vague accounts of them than those of
De Saulcy.
But he was disappointed,
and honest enough to
confess his disappointment.
So vanished one of the most
cherished parts of the legend.
But worse remained
behind.
In the orthodox
duke’s
company was an acute geologist,
Monsieur Lartet, who in
due time made an elaborate report, which let a flood of light
into the whole region.
The Abbe Richard had been rejoicing the orthodox heart
of France by exhibiting
some prehistoric
flint implements as
the knives which Joshua had made for circumcision.
By a
truthful statement Monsieur Lartet set all France laughing
at the Abb& and then turned to the geology of the Dead
Sea basin.
While he conceded
that man may have seen
some volcanic crisis there, and may have preserved
a vivid
remembrance
of the vapour then rising, his whole argu-
’
254 ‘DEAD
SEA
LEGENDS
TO
COMPARATIVE
MYTHOLOGY.
ment showed irresistibly
that all the phenomena
of the
region are due to natural causes, and that, so far from
a sudden rising of the lake above the valley within historic
times, it has been for ages steadily subsiding.
Since Balaam was called by Balak to curse his enemies,
and “ blessed them altogether,”
there has never been a more
unexpected tribute to truth.
Even the salt pillar at Usdum, as depicted
in Lynch’s
book, aided to undermine
the myth among thinking men ;
for the background
of the picture
showed other pillars
of salt in process of formation ; and the ultimate result of all
these expeditions
was to spread an atmosphere
in which
myth and legend became more and more attenuated.
To sum up the main points in this work of the nineteenth
century:
Seetzen,
Robinson,
and others had found that a
human being could traverse the lake without being killed by
hellish smoke ; that the waters gave forth no odours; that
the fruits of the region were not created full of cinders to
match the desolation of the Dead Sea, but were growths not
uncommon in Asia Minor and elsewhere;
in fact, that all the
phenomena were due to natural causes.
Ritter and others had shown that all noted features of the
Dead Sea and the surrounding
country were to be found in
various other lakes and regions, to which no supernatural
cause was ascribed
among enlightened
men.
Lynch, Van
de Velde, Osborne, and others had revealed
the fact that
the “ pillar of salt ” was frequently formed anew by the rains,;
and Lartet and other geologists had given a final blow to the
myths by makin g it clear from the markings on the neighbouring rocks that, instead of a sudden upheaval of the sea
above the valley of Siddim, there had been a gradual subsidence for ages.*
* For See&n, see his Reisen, edited by Kruse, Berlin, r854-‘59 ; for the “ Dead
Sea Fruits,” vol. ii, pp. 231 et seq. ; for the appearance
of the sea, etc., p. 243, and
elsewhere : for the Arab explanatory
transformation
As to similarity of the “ pillars of salt ” to columns
legends, vol. iii, pp. 7, 14, 17.
washed out by rains elsewhere,
see Kruse’s commentary
in vol. iv, p. 240; also Fallmerayer,
vol. i, p. 197.
Irby and Mangles,
see work already cited.
For Robinson,
see his BiU&zZ
sear&~,
London, 1841; also his Later BNicaZ Researches, London,
1856.
Lynch,
see his Narrative,
Schrift, pp. 186, 187.
London,
For
1849.
De Saulcy,
For
ReFor
For Gratz, see his ScAaupZa~z a’ev Heyl.
see his Voyage autour de Za Mer Xorte,
BEGINNINGS
,
OF
SCEPTICISM.
255
Even before all this evidence was in, a judicial decision
had been pronounced upon the whole question by an authority both Christian and scientific, from whom there could be
no appeal.
During the second quarter of the century Prof.
Carl Ritter, of the University
of Berlin, began giving to the
world those researches
which have placed him at the head
of all geographers
ancient or modern, and finally he brought
together those relating to the geography
of the Holy Land,
publishing
them as part of his great work on the physical
He was a Christian,
and nothing
geography
of the earth.
could be more reverent than his treatment of the whole subject ; but his German honesty did not permit him to conceal
the truth, and he simply classed together
all the stories of
the Dead Sea-old
and new-no
matter where found, whether
in the sacred books of Jews, Christians, or Mohammedans,
whether in lives of saints or accounts of travellers, as “ myths ”
and “ sagas.”
From this decision there has never been among intelligent men any appeal.
The recent adjustment of orthodox thought to the scientific view of the Dead Sea legends presents some curious
As typical we may take the travels of two German
features.
theologians
between 1860 and r87o-John
Kranzel, pastor in
Munich, and Peter Scheg g, lately professor in the university
of that city.
The archdiocese
of Munich-Freising
is one of those in
which the attempt to suppress modern scientific thought has
been most steadily carried on. Its archbishops
have constantly shown themselves
assiduous in securing
cardinals’
The
hats by thwarting science and by stupefying education.
twin towers of the old cathedral of Munich have seemed to
throw a killing shadow over intellectual
development
in that
Paris, 1853, especially vol. i, p. 252, and his journal of the early months of 1851, in
vol. ii, comparing with it his work of the same title published in 1858 in the Bib&
For Lartet, see his
U2qu Cat~oZi+~e de voyages et de Remans, vol. i, pp. 78-81.
papers read before the Geographical
Society at Paris ; also citations in Robinson ;
but, above all, his elaborate reports which form the greater part of the second and
third volumes of the monumental
work, which bears the name of De Luynes,
already cited.
For exposures of De Saulcy’s credulity and errors, see Van de
Land of IsraJ;
also
Velde, Syria and Palestine,passim; also Canon Tristram’s
De Luynes, passim.
256
DEAD
SEA LEGENDS
TO COMPARATIVE
MYTHOLOGY,
Naturally, then, these two clerical travellers
from
region.
that diocese did not commit themselves to clearing away any
of the Dead Sea myths; but it is significant that neither of
them follows the example of so many of their clerical predethe salt-pillar
legend : they steadily
cessors in defending
avoid it altogether.
The more recent history of the salt pillar, since Lynch,
deserves
mention.
It appears that the travellers
immediately after him found it shaped by the storms into a spire;
that a year or two later it had utterly disappeared ; and
about the year 1870 Prof. Palmer, on visiting the place, found
at some distance from the main salt bed, as he says, “a tall,
isolated needle of rock, which does really bear a curious
resemblance
to an Arab woman with a child upon her
shoulders.”
And, finally, Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible, the standard
work of reference
for English-speaking
scholars, makes its
concession to the old belief regarding Sodom and Gomorrah
as slight as possible, and the myth of Lot’s wife entirely disappears.
IV.
THEOLOGICAL
EFFORTS
THE
AT
COMPROMISE.-TRIUMPH
SCIENTIFIC
OF
VIEW.
The theological
effort to compromise
with science now
came in more strongly
than ever.
This effort had been
made long before:
as we have seen, it had begun to show
itself decidedly as soon as the influence of the Baconian philosophy was felt.
Le Clerc suggested that the shock caused
by the sight of fire from heaven killed Lot’s wife instantly
and made her body rigid as a statue.
Eichhorn
suggested
that she fell into a stream of melted bitumen.
Michaelis
suggested that her relatives raised a monument of salt rock
to her memory.
Friedrichs
suggested
that she fell into the
sea and that the salt stiffened around her clothing, thus making a statue of her.
Some claimed that a shower of sulphur
came down upon her, and that the word which has been transOthers
lated “ salt ” could possibly be translated “ sulphur.”
hinted that the salt by its antiseptic qualities preserved her
body as a mummy.
De Saulcy, as we have seen, thought
that a piece of salt rock fell upon her; and very recently
,
THEOLOGICAL
EFFORTS
AT
COMPROMISE.
257
Principal
Dawson has ventured the explanation that a flood
of salt mud coming from a volcano incrusted her.
But theologians
themselves
were the first to show the
The more rationalistic
inadequacy
of these explanations.
pointed out the fact that they were contrary to the sacred
text: Von Bohlen, an eminent professor
at KBnigsberg,
in
his sturdy German
honesty,
declared
that the salt pillar
gave rise to the story, and compared
the pillar of salt
causing
this transformation
legend to the rock in Greek
mythology
which gave rise to the transformation
legend
of Niobe.
On the other hand, the more severely orthodox protested
against such attempts to explain away the clear statements
Dom Calmet,
while presenting
many of
of Holy Writ.
these explanations
made as early as his time, gives us to
understand that nearly all theologians
adhered to the idea
that Lot’s wife was instantly and really changed into salt ;
and in our own time, as we shall presently see, have come
some very vigorous protests.
Similar attempts were made to explain the other ancient
legends regarding
the Dead Sea.
One of the most recent
01 these is that the cities of the plain, having been built with
blocks of bituminous
rock, were set on fire by lightning, a
contemporary
earthquake
helping on the work.
Still another is that accumulations
of petroleum
and inflammable
gas escaped through a fissure, took fire, and so produced
the catastrophe.*
The revolt against such efforts to yecofzc2e scientific fact
with myth and legend had become very evident about the
middle of the nineteenth century.
In 1851 and 1852 Van de
Velde
made his journey.
He was a most devout man,
but he confessed
that the volcanic action at the Dead Sea
must have been far earlier than the catastrophe
mentioned
in our sacred books, and that “the overthrow of Sodom and
* For KrLnzel,see his
R&e nach Jerusalem, etc. For Schegg, see his Gtvf’pnkZ’i&rreise,
etc., 1867, chap. xxiv.
For Palmer, see his Desert of fhe
&-o&s,
vol. ii, pp. 478, 479.
For the various compromises,
see works already
cited, passim.
For Von Bohlen, see his Genesis, KGnigsberg, 1835, pp. z-213.
For Calmet, see his Dirtiona?iun,
etc., Venet., 1766.
For very recent compromises, see J. W. Dawson and Dr. Cunningham
Geikie in works cited.
drtrh einer
45
258 DEAD
SEA LEGENDS
TO COMPARATIVE
MYTHOLOGY.
Gomorrah had nothing to do with this.”
A few years later
an eminent dignitary
of the English
Church, Canon Tristram, doctor
of divinity
and fellow of the Royal
Society, who had explored the Holy Land thoroughly,
after
some generalities
about miracles, gave up the whole attempt
to make science agree with the myths, and used these words :
“It has been frequently assumed that the district of Usdum
and its sister cities was the result of some tremendous
geological catastrophe.
. . . Now, careful examination
by competent geologists, such as Monsieur
Lartet and others, has
shown that the whole district has assumed its present shape
slowly and gradually through a succession of ages, and that
its peculiar phenomena are similar to those of other lakes.”
So sank from view the whole mass of Dead Sea myths and
legends, and science gained a victory both for geology and
comparative
mythology.
As a protest against this sort of rationalism
appeared in
1876 an edition of Monseigneur
Mislin’s work on The I?r,ly
Places.
In order to give weight to the book, it was prefaced
by letters from Pope Pius IX and sundry high ecclesiastics
-and
from Alexandre
Dumas!
His hatred of Protestant
missionaries in the East is phenomenal:
he calls them “ bagascribes
all
mischief
and
infamy
to them, and his
men,”
hatred is only exceeded
by his credulity.
He cites all the
arguments in favour of the salt statue at Usdum as the identical one into which Lot’s wife was changed, adds some of
his own, and presents her as ‘(a type of doubt and heresy.”
With the proverbial
facility of dogmatists in translating
any
word of,a dead language into anything that suits their purpose, he says that the word in the nineteenth
chapter of
Genesis
which is translated
“statue ” or “ pillar,” may be
translated “ eternal monument ” ; he is especially severe on
poor Monsieur
De Saulcy for thinking that Lot’s wife was
killed by the falling of a piece of, salt rock ; and he actually
boasts that it was he who caused De Saulcy, a member of
the French Institute, to suppress the obnoxious passage in a
later edition.
Between
1870 and 1880 came two killing blows at the
older theories, and they were dealt by two American scholars
of the highest character.
First of these may be mentioned
.
THEOLOGICAL
EFFORTS
AT
COMPROMISE.
259
Dr. Philip Schaff, a professor
in the Presbyterian
Theological Seminary
at New York, who published
his travels
In a high degree he united the scientific with the
in 1877.
religious spirit, but the trait which made him especially fit
for dealing with this subject was his straightforward
GerHe tells the simple truth regarding the pillar
man honesty.
of salt, so far as its physical origin and characteristics
are
concerned, and leaves his reader to draw the natural inference as to its relation to the myth.
With the fate of Dr.
Robertson
Smith in Scotland
and Dr. Woodrow
in South
Carolina before him-both
recently driven from their professorships for truth-telling-Dr.
Schaff deserves honour for
telling as much as he does.
Similar in effect, and even more bold in statement, were
the travels of the Rev. Henry Osborn, published in 1878.
In a truly scientific spirit he calls attention to the similarity
of the Dead Sea, with the river Jordan, to sundry other
lake and river systems;
points out the endless variations
between writers describing
the salt formations
at Usdum ;
accounts
rationally
for these variations,
and quotes from
Dr. Anderson’s
report, saying, “ From the soluble nature
of the salt and the crumbling
looseness
of the marl, it
may well be imagined
that, while some of these needles
are in the process of formation,
others are being washed
away.”
Thus came out, little by little, the truth regarding
the
Dead Sea myths, and especially
the salt pillar at Usdum ;
but the final truth remained to be told in the Church, and
now one of the purest men and truest divines of this century
told it. Arthur Stanley, Dean of Westminster,
visiting the
country and thoroughly
exploring
it, allowed that the physical features of the Dead Sea and its shores suggested
the
myths and legends, and he sums up the whole as follows:
“A great mass of legends
and exaggerations,
partly the
cause and partly the result of the old belief that the cities
were buried under the Dead Sea, has been gradually removed
in recent years.”
So, too, about the same time, Dr. Conrad Furrer, pastor
of the great church of St. Peter at Ztirich, gave to the world
a book of travels, reverent
and thoughtful, and in this hon-
260
DEAD
SEA LEGENDS
TO COMPARATIVE
MYTHOLOGY.
estly acknowledged
that the needles of salt at the southern
times gave rise to the
end of the Dead Sea “in primitive
tradition that Lot’s wife was transformed
into a statue of
Thus was the mythical character of this story at last
salt.”
openly confessed by leading churchmen on both continents.
Plain statements
like these from such sources left the
high theological
position more difficult than ever, and now
a new compromise
was attempted.
As the Siberian mother
tried to save her best-beloved child from the pursuing wolves
by throwing over to them her less favoured children, so an
effort was now made in a leading commentary
to save the
legends of the valley of Siddim and the miraculous destruction of the cities by throwing overboard the legend of Lot’s
wife.*
An amusing result has followed this development of opinion. As we have already seen, traveller after traveller, Catholic and Protestant, now visits the Dead Sea, and hardly one
of them follows the New Testament
injunction
to “ remember Lot’s wife.”
Nearly every one of them seems to think
Of the great mass of pious legends
it best to forget her.
they are shy enough, but that of Lot’s wife, as a rule, they
seem never to have heard of, and if they do allude to it
they simply cover the whole subject with a haze of pious
rhet0ric.t
Naturally, under this state of things, there has followed
the usual attempt to throw off from Christendom
the responsibility
of the old belief, and in 1887 came a curious
* For
Mislin,
cially note at foot
cially chapter xxix
seq. ; also
see his Les Snints Lieux, Paris, 1876. vol. iii, pp 2go-293,
espeE‘or Schaff, see his TIwough Bibk Lnna’s, espeof page 292.
; seealsoRev.
Stanley’s
Sinai
H. S. Osborn,
and Palestine,
M. A., The fl~$
London,
1887,
Land,
especially
pp. 267 et
pp. Zqo-293.
For Furrer, see his En Palestine, Geneva, 1886, vol. i, p. 246.
For the attempt to
save one legend by throwing
overboard
the other, see Keil and Delitzsch, BiLZi-
sche~ Commenta? ti6er das AZ& Testament, vol.
see his Syria and Palestine, vol. ii, p. 120.
t The only notice
command
is a very
of the
Lot’s
wife legend
curious
one
by Leopold
i, pp.
155, 156.
For Van de Velde,
in the editions
van
Buch,
of Robinson
the
eminent
at my
geologist.
Robinson, with a fearlessness which does him credit, consulted Von Buch, who in
his answer was evidently inclined to make things easy for Robinson
by hinting
that Lot was so much
wife had been
See Robinson,
struck
with
changed into salt.
BibZicaZ &searches
the salt formations
that
On this theory Robinson
in Pahstine,
etc., London,
Ae inaginea’
that his
makes no comment.
1841,
vol. ii, p. 674.
THEOLOGICAL
EFFORTS
AT
COMPROMISE.
261
In that year appeared
the Rev. Dr.
effort of this sort.
Cunningham
Geikie’s valuable work on 2% No& Land ad
In it he makes the following statement
as to the
the Bible.
salt formation
at Usdum : “ Here and there, hardened portions of salt withstanding
the water, while all around them
melts and wears off, rise up isolated pillars, one of which
bears among the Arabs the name of ‘ Lot’s wife.’ ”
In the light of the previous
history, there is something
at once pathetic and comical in this attempt to throw the
myth upon the shoulders of the poor Arabs.
The myth
was not originated by Mohammedans
; it appears, as we have
seen, first among the Jews, and, I need hardly remind the
reader, comes out in the Book of Wisdom and in Josephus,
and has been steadily maintained
by fathers, martyrs, and
doctors of the Church, by at least one pope, and by innumerand travellers,
able bishops, priests, monks, commentators,
Catholic and Protestant,
ever since.
In thus throwing
the
responsibility
of the myth upon the Arabs Dr. Geikie appears to show both the “ perfervid
genius ” of his countrymen and their incapacity
to recognise a joke.
Nor is he more happy in his rationalistic
explanations
of
the whole mass of myths.
He supposes a terrific storm, in
which the lightning kindled the combustible
materials of the
cities, aided perhaps by an earthquake ; but this shows a disposition to break away from the exact statements
of the
sacred books which would have been most severely condemned by the universal Church during at least eighteen
hundred years of its history.
Nor would the explanations
of Sir William
Dawson have fared any better:
it is very
doubtful whether either of them could escape unscathed
today from a synod of the Free Church of Scotland, or of any
of the leading orthodox bodies in the Southern States of the
American Union.*
How unsatisfactory
all such rationalism
must be to a
truly theological
mind is seen not only in the dealings with
Prof. Robertson
Smith in Scotland
and Prof. Woodrow in
*
For these most
recent
explanations,
see Rev.
Cunningham
Geikie,
D. D., in
work cited ; also Sir J. W. Dawson, Egyj~r and .Sjwi~, published
by the Religious
Tract Society, 1887, ~_‘p.125, 126 ; see also Dawson’s
article in T!ze Expositor for
January,
1886.
262
DEAD
SEA LEGENDS
TO COMPARATIVE
MYTHOLOGY.
Sout.h Carolina, but most clearly in a book published
in
1886 by Monseigneur
Haussmann de Wandelburg.
Among
other things, the author was Prelate of the Pope’s Household, a Mitred,Abbot,
Canon of the Holy Sepulchre,
and a
Doctor of Theology of the Pontifical
University
at Rome,
and his work is introduced
by approving letters from Pope
Leo XIII and the Patriarch
of Jerusalem.
Monseigneur
de
Wandelburg
scorns the idea that the salt column at Usdum
is not the statue of Lot’s wife; he points out not only the
danger of yielding
this evidence
of miracle to rationalism,
but the fact that the divinely inspired authority of the Book
of Wisdom, written, at the latest, two hundred and fifty years
before Christ, distinctly refers to it. He summons Josephus
as a witness.
He dwells on the fact that St. Clement of
Rome, Irenaeus, Hegesippus,
and St. Cyril, “ who as Bishop
of Jerusalem
must have known better than any other person
what existed in Palestine,” with St. Jerome, St. Chrysostom,
and a multitude of others, attest, as a matter of their own
knowledge
or of popular notoriety,
that the remains
of
Lot’s wife really existed in their time in the form of a column of salt; and he points triumphantly
to the fact that
Lieutenant
Lynch found this very column.
In the presence
of such a continuous
line of witnesses,
some of them considered
as divinely inspired,
and all of
them greatly revered-a
line extending through thirty-seven
hundred years-he
condemns most vigorously all those who
do not believe that the pillar of salt now at Usdum is identical with the wife of Lot, and stigmatizes them as people who
“ do not wish to believe the truth of the Word of God.”
His
ignorance
of many of the simplest facts bearing upon the
legend is very striking, yet he does not hesitate to speak of
men who know far more and have thought far more upon
The most curious feathe subject as “ grossly ignorant.”
ture in his ignorance is the fact that he is utterly unaware of
the annual changes in the salt statue.
He is entirely ignorant of such facts as that the priest Gabriel Giraudet in the
sixteenth
century found the statue lying down ; that the
monk Zwinner found it in the seventeenth
century standing,
and accompanied
by a dog also transformed
into salt; that
Prince Radziwill found no statue at all ; that the pious Vin-
TRIUMPH
OF THE
SCIENTIFIC
VIEW.
263
cent Briemle in the eighteenth century found the monument
renewing itself; that about the middle of the nineteenth century Lynch found it in the shape of a tower or column forty
feet high ; that within two years afterward De Saulcy found
it washed into the form of a spire ; that a year later Van de
Velde found it utterly washed away ; and that a few years
later Palmer found it “ a statue bearing a striking resemblance
to an Arab woman with a child in her arms.”
So ended the
last great demonstration,
thus far, on the side of sacred science-the
last retreating shot from the theological rear guard.
It is but just to say that a very great share in the honour
of the victory of science in this field is due to men trained
It would naturally be so, since few others
as theologians.
have devoted themselves
to direct labour in it; yet great
honour is none the less due to such men as Reland, Mariti,
Smith, Robinson,
Stanley, Tristram,
and Schaff.
They have rendered even a greater
service to religion
than to science, for they have made a beginning, at least, of
doing away with that enforced belief in myths as history
which has become a most serious danger to Christianity.
For the worst enemy of Christianity
could wish nothing
more than that its main leaders should prove that it can not
be adopted save by those who accept, as historical, statements which unbiased men throughout
the world know to
be mythical.
The result of such a demonst.ration
would
only be more and more to make thinking people inside the
Church dissemblers,
and thinking people outside, scoffers.
Far better is it to welcome the aid of science, in the conviction that all truth is one, and, in the light of this truth, to
allow theology and science to work together in the steady
evolution of religion and morality.
The revelations
made by the sciences
which most directly deal with the history of man all converge in the truth
that during the earlier stages of this evolution
moral and
spiritual teachings
must be inclosed
in myth, legend, and
parable.
“ The Master” felt this when he gave to the poor
peasants about him, and so to the world, his simple and
beautiful illustrations.
In making this truth clear, science
will give to religion far more than it will take away, for it
will throw new life and light into all sacred literature.
.
CHAPTER
FROM
LEVITICUS
1. ORIGIN
AND
XIX.
TO POLITICAL
PROGRESS
AT
OF HOSTILITY
BCONOMY.
TO LOASS
INTEREST.
AMONG
questions on which the supporters
of right reason in political and social science have only conquered theological opposition
aft