CHAPTER 2.
"They undertake by scales of miles to tell
The bounds, dimensions, and extent of hell;
Where bloated souls in smoky durance hung
Like a Westphalia gammon or neat's tongue,
To be redeemed with masses and a song."
— OLDHAM: Satires upon the Jesuits.
"York. — But you are more inhuman, more inexorable —
O, ten times more — than tigers of Hyrcania."
— King Henry VI., Part Third, Act i., Scene iv.
"War. — And hark ye, Sirs; because she is a maid
Spare for no faggots, let there be enough;
Place barrels of pitch upon the fatal stake."
— King Henry VI., Part First, Act v., Scene iv.
IN that famous work of Bodin, on sorcery, [1] a frightful story is told about Catherine of Medicis. The author was a learned publicist, who, during twenty years of his life, collected authentic documents from the archives of nearly every important city of France, to make up a complete work on sorcery, magic, and the power of various "demons." To use an expression of Eliphas Levi, his book offers a most remarkable collection of "bloody and hideous facts; acts of revolting superstition, arrests, and executions of stupid ferocity." "Burn every body!" the Inquisition seemed to say — God will easily sort out His own! Poor fools, hysterical women, and idiots were roasted alive, without mercy, for the crime of "magic." But, "at the same time, how many great culprits escaped this unjust and sanguinary justice! This is what Bodin makes us fully appreciate."
Catherine, the pious Christian — who has so well deserved in the eyes of the Church of Christ for the atrocious and never-to-be-forgotten massacre of St. Bartholomew — the Queen Catherine, kept in her service an apostate Jacobin priest. Well versed in the "black art," so fully patronized by the Medici family, he had won the gratitude and protection of his pious mistress, by his unparalleled skill in killing people at a distance, by torturing with various incantations their wax simulacra. The process has been described over and over again, and we scarcely need repeat it.
Charles was lying sick of an incurable disease. The queen-mother, had everything to lose in case of his death, resorted to necromancy, consulted the oracle of the "bleeding head." This infernal operation required the decapitation of a child who must be possessed of great beauty and purity. He had been prepared in secret for his first communion, by the chaplain of the palace, who was apprised of the plot, and at midnight of the appointed day, in the chamber of the sick man, and in presence only of Catherine and a few of her confederates, the "devil's mass" was celebrated. Let us give the rest of the story as we find it in one of Levi's works: "At this mass, celebrated before the image of the demon, having under his feet a reversed cross, the sorcerer consecrated two wafers, one black and one white. The white was given to the child, whom they brought clothed as for baptism, and who was murdered upon the very steps of the altar, immediately after his communion. His head, separated from the trunk by a single blow, was placed, all palpitating, upon the great black wafer which covered the bottom of the paten, then placed upon a table where some mysterious lamps were burning. The exorcism then began, and the demon was charged to pronounce an oracle, and reply by the mouth of this head to a secret question that the king dared not speak aloud, and that had been confided to no one. Then a feeble voice, a strange voice, which had nothing of human character about it, made itself audible in this poor little martyr's head." The sorcery availed nothing; the king died, and — Catherine remained the faithful daughter of Rome!
How strange, that des Mousseaux, who makes such free use of Bodin's materials to construct his formidable indictment against Spiritualists and other sorcerers, should have overlooked this interesting episode!
It is a well-attested fact that Pope Sylvester II. was publicly accused by Cardinal Benno with being a sorcerer and an enchanter. The brazen "oracular head" made by his Holiness was of the same kind as the one fabricated by Albertus Magnus. The latter was smashed to pieces by Thomas Aquinas, not because it was the work of or inhabited by a "demon," but because the spook who was fixed inside, by mesmeric power, talked incessantly, and his verbiage prevented the eloquent saint from working out his mathematical problems. These heads and other talking statues, trophies of the magical skill of monks and bishops, were fac-similes of the "animated" gods of the ancient temples. The accusation against the Pope was proved at the time. It was also demonstrated that he was constantly attended by "demons" or spirits. In the preceding chapter we have mentioned Benedict IX., John XX., and the VIth and VIIth Gregory, who were all known as magicians. The latter Pope, moreover, was the famous Hildebrand, who was said to have been so expert at "shaking lightning out of his sleeve." An expression which makes the venerable spiritualistic writer, Mr. Howitt, think that "it was the origin of the celebrated thunder of the Vatican."
The magical achievements of the Bishop of Ratisbon and those of the "angelic doctor," Thomas Aquinas, are too well known to need repetition; but we may explain farther how the "illusions" of the former were produced. If the Catholic bishop was so clever in making people believe on a bitter winter night that they were enjoying the delights of a splendid summer day, and cause the icicles hanging from the boughs of the trees in the garden to seem like so many tropical fruits, the Hindu magicians also practice such biological powers unto this very day, and claim the assistance of neither god nor devil. Such "miracles" are all produced by the same human power that is inherent in every man, if he only knew how to develop it.
About the time of the Reformation, the study of alchemy and magic had become so prevalent among the clergy as to produce great scandal. Cardinal Wolsey was openly accused before the court and the privy-council of confederacy with a man named Wood, a sorcerer, who said that "My Lord Cardinale had suche a rynge that whatsomevere he askyd of the Kynges grace that he hadd yt"; adding that "Master Cromwell, when he . . . was servaunt in my lord cardynales housse . . . rede many bokes and specyally the boke of Salamon . . . and studied mettells and what vertues they had after the canon of Salamon." This case, with several others equally curious, is to be found among the Cromwell papers in the Record Office of the Rolls House.
A priest named William Stapleton was arrested as a conjurer, during the reign of Henry VIII., and an account of his adventures is still preserved in the Rolls House records. The Sicilian priest whom Benvenuto Cellini calls a necromancer, became famous through his successful conjurations, and was never molested. The remarkable adventure of Cellini with him in the Colosseum, where the priest conjured up a whole host of devils, is well known to the reading public. The subsequent meeting of Cellini with his mistress, as predicted and brought about by the conjurer, at the precise time fixed by him, is to be considered, as a matter of course, a "curious coincidence." In the latter part of the sixteenth century there was hardly a parish to be found in which the priests did not study magic and alchemy. The practice of exorcism to cast out devils "in imitation of Christ," who by the way never used exorcism at all, led the clergy to devote themselves openly to "sacred" magic in contradistinction to black art, of which latter crime were accused all those who were neither priests nor monks.
The occult knowledge gleaned by the Roman Church from the once fat fields of theurgy she sedulously guarded for her own use, and sent to the stake only those practitioners who "poached" on her lands of the Scientia Scientiarum, and those whose sins could not be concealed by the friar's frock. The proof of it lies in the records of history. "In the course only of fifteen years, between 1580 to 1595, and only in the single province of Lorraine, the President Remigius burned 900 witches," says Thomas Wright, in his Sorcery and Magic. It was during these days, prolific in ecclesiastical murder and unrivalled for cruelty and ferocity, that Jean Bodin wrote.
While the orthodox clergy called forth whole legions of "demons" through magical incantations, unmolested by the authorities, provided they held fast to the established dogmas and taught no heresy, on the other hand, acts of unparalleled atrocity were perpetrated on poor, unfortunate fools. Gabriel Malagrida, an old man of eighty, was burnt by these evangelical Jack Ketches in 1761. In the Amsterdam library there is a copy of the report of his famous trial, translated from the Lisbon edition. He was accused of sorcery and illicit intercourse with the Devil, who had "disclosed to him futurity." (?) The prophecy imparted by the Arch-Enemy to the poor visionary Jesuit is reported in the following terms: "The culprit hath confessed that the demon, under the form of the blessed Virgin, having commanded him to write the life of Antichrist (?), told him that he, Malagrida, was a second John, but more clear than John the Evangelist; that there were to be three Antichrists, and that the last should be born at Milan, of a monk and a nun, in the year 1920; that he would marry Proserpine, one of the infernal furies," etc.
The prophecy is to be verified forty-three years hence. Even were all the children born of monks and nuns really to become antichrists if allowed to grow up to maturity, the fact would seem far less deplorable than the discoveries made in so many convents when the foundations have been removed for some reason. If the assertion of Luther is to be disbelieved on account of his hatred for popery, then we may name discoveries of the same character made quite recently in Austrian and Russian Poland. Luther speaks of a fish-pond at Rome, situated near a convent of nuns, which, having been cleared out by order of Pope Gregory, disclosed, at the bottom, over six thousand infant skulls; and of a nunnery at Neinburg, in Austria, whose foundations, when searched, disclosed the same relics of celibacy and chastity!
"Ecclesia non novit Sanguinem!" meekly repeated the scarlet-robed cardinals. And to avoid the spilling of blood which horrified them, they instituted the Holy Inquisition. If, as the occultists maintain, and science half confirms, our most trifling acts and thoughts are indelibly impressed upon the eternal mirror of the astral ether, there must be somewhere, in the boundless realm of the unseen universe, the imprint of a curious picture. It is that of a gorgeous standard waving in the heavenly breeze at the foot of the great "white throne" of the Almighty. On its crimson damask face a cross, symbol of "the Son of God who died for mankind," with an olive branch on one side, and a sword, stained to the hilt with human gore, on the other. A legend selected from the Psalms emblazoned in golden letters, reading thus: "Exurge, Domine, et judica causam meam." For such appears the standard of the Inquisition, on a photograph in our possession, from an original procured at the Escurial of Madrid.
Under this Christian standard, in the brief space of fourteen years, Tomas de Torquemada, the confessor of Queen Isabella, burned over ten thousand persons, and sentenced to the torture eighty thousand more. Orobio, the well-known writer, who was detained so long in prison, and who hardly escaped the flames of the Inquisition, immortalized this institution in his works when once at liberty in Holland. He found no better argument against the Holy Church than to embrace the Judaic faith and submit even to circumcision. "In the cathedral of Saragossa," says a writer on the Inquisition, "is the tomb of a famous inquisitor. Six pillars surround the tomb; to each is chained a Moor, as preparatory to being burned." On this St. Foix ingenuously observes: "If ever the Jack Ketch of any country should be rich enough to have a splendid tomb, this might serve as an excellent model!" To make it complete, however, the builders of the tomb ought not to have omitted a bas-relief of the famous horse which was burnt for sorcery and witchcraft. Granger tells the story, describing it as having occurred in his time. The poor animal "had been taught to tell the spots upon cards, and the hour of the day by the watch. Horse and owner were both indicted by the sacred office for dealing with the Devil, and both were burned, with a great ceremony of auto-da-fé, at Lisbon, in 1601, as wizards!"
This immortal institution of Christianity did not remain without its Dante to sing its praise. "Macedo, a Portuguese Jesuit," says the author of Demonologia, "has discovered the origin of the Inquisition, in the terrestrial Paradise, and presumes to allege that God was the first who began the functions of an inquisitor over Cain and the workmen of Babel!"
Nowhere, during the middle ages, were the arts of magic and sorcery more practiced by the clergy than in Spain and Portugal. The Moors were profoundly versed in the occult sciences, and at Toledo, Seville, and Salamanca, were, once upon a time, the great schools of magic. The kabalists of the latter town were skilled in all the abstruse sciences; they knew the virtues of precious stones and other minerals, and had extracted from alchemy its most profound secrets.
The authentic documents pertaining to the great trial of the Marechale d'Ancre, during the regency of Marie de Medicis, disclose that the unfortunate woman perished through the fault of the priests with whom, like a true Italian, she surrounded herself. She was accused by the people of Paris of sorcery, because it had been asserted that she had used, after the ceremony of exorcism, newly-killed white cocks. Believing herself constantly bewitched, and being in very delicate health, the Marechale had the ceremony of exorcism publicly applied to herself in the Church of the Augustins; as to the birds, she used them as an application to the forehead on account of dreadful pains in the head, and had been advised to do so by Montalto, the Jew physician of the queen, and the Italian priests.
In the sixteenth century, the Cure de Barjota, of the diocese of Callahora, Spain, became the world's wonder for his magical powers. His most extraordinary feat consisted, it was said, in transporting himself to any distant country, witnessing political and other events, and then returning home to predict them in his own country. He had a familiar demon, who served him faithfully for long years, says the Chronicle, but the cure turned ungrateful and cheated him. Having been apprised by his demon of a conspiracy against the Pope's life, in consequence of an intrigue of the latter with a fair lady, the cure transported himself to Rome (in his double, of course) and thus saved his Holiness' life. After which he repented, confessed his sins to the gallant Pope, and got absolution. "On his return he was delivered, as a matter of form, into the custody of the inquisitors of Logrono, but was acquitted and restored to his liberty very soon."
Friar Pietro, a Dominican monk of the fourteenth century — the magician who presented the famous Dr. Eugenio Torralva, a physician attached to the house of the admiral of Castile, with a demon named Zequiel — won his fame through the subsequent trial of Torralva. The procedure and circumstances attendant upon the extraordinary trial are described in the original papers preserved in the Archives of the Inquisition. The Cardinal of Volterra, and the Cardinal of Santa Cruz, both saw and communicated with Zequiel, who proved, during the whole of Torralva's life, to be a pure, kind, elemental spirit, doing many beneficent actions, and remaining faithful to the physician to the last hour of his life. Even the Inquisition acquitted Torralva, on that account; and, although an immortality of fame was insured to him by the satire of Cervantes, neither Torralva nor the monk Pietro are fictitious heroes, but historical personages, recorded in ecclesiastical documents of Rome and Cuença, in which town the trial of the physician took place, January the 29th, 1530.
The book of Dr. W. G. Soldan, of Stuttgart, has become as famous in Germany, as Bodin's book on Demonomania in France. It is the most complete German treatise on witchcraft of the sixteenth century. One interested to learn the secret machinery underlying these thousands of legal murders, perpetrated by a clergy who pretended to believe in the Devil, and succeeded in making others believe in him, will find it divulged in the above-mentioned work. [2] The true origin of the daily accusations and death-sentences for sorcery are cleverly traced to personal and political enmities, and, above all, to the hatred of the Catholics toward the Protestants. The crafty work of the Jesuits is seen at every page of the bloody tragedies; and it is in Bamberg and Wurzburg, where these worthy sons of Loyola were most powerful at that time, that the cases of witchcraft were most numerous. On the next page we give a curious list of some victims, many of whom were children between the ages of seven and eight years, and Protestants. "Of the multitudes of persons who perished at the stake in Germany during the first half of the seventeenth century for sorcery, the crime of many was their attachment to the religion of Luther," says T. Wright, " . . . and the petty princes were not unwilling to seize upon any pretense to fill their coffers . . . the persons most persecuted being those whose property was a matter of consideration. . . . At Bamberg, as well as at Würzburg, the bishop was a sovereign prince in his dominions. The Prince-Bishop, John George II., who ruled Bamberg . . . after several unsuccessful attempts to root out Lutheranism, distinguished his reign by a series of sanguinary witch-trials, which disgrace the annals of that city. . . . We may form some notion of the proceedings of his worthy agent, [3] from the statement of the most authentic historians, that between 1625 and 1630, not less than 900 trials took place in the two courts of Bamberg and Zeil; and a pamphlet published at Bamberg by authority, in 1659, states the number of persons whom Bishop John George had caused to be burned for sorcery, to have been 600." [4]
Regretting that space should prevent our giving one of the most curious lists in the world of burned witches, we will nevertheless make a few extracts from the original record as printed in Hauber's Bibliotheca Magica. One glance at this horrible catalogue of murders in Christ's name, is sufficient to discover that out of 162 persons burned, more than one-half of them are designated as strangers (i.e., Protestants) in this hospitable town; and of the other half we find thirty-four children, the oldest of whom was fourteen, the youngest an infant child of Dr. Schutz. To make the catalogue shorter we will present of each of the twenty-nine burnings, but the most remarkable. [5]
IN THE FIRST BURNING, FOUR PERSONS.
Old Ancker's widow.
The wife of Liebler.
The wife of Gutbrodt.
The wife of Hocker.
IN THE SECOND BURNING, FOUR PERSONS.
Two strange women (names unknown).
The old wife of Beutler.
IN THE THIRD BURNING, FIVE PERSONS.
Tungersleber, a minstrel.
Four wives of citizens.
IN THE FOURTH BURNING, FIVE PERSONS.
A strange man.
IN THE FIFTH BURNING, NINE PERSONS.
Lutz, an eminent shop-keeper.
The wife of Baunach, a senator.
IN THE SIXTH BURNING, SIX PERSONS.
The fat tailor's wife.
A strange man.
A strange woman.
IN THE SEVENTH BURNING, SEVEN PERSONS.
A strange girl of twelve years old.
A strange man, a strange woman.
A strange bailiff (Schultheiss).
Three strange women.
IN THE EIGHTH BURNING, SEVEN PERSONS.
Baunach, a senator, the fattest citizen in Wurzburg.
A strange man.
Two strange women.
IN THE NINTH BURNING, FIVE PERSONS.
A strange man.
A mother and daughter.
IN THE TENTH BURNING, THREE PERSONS.
Steinacher, a very rich man.
A strange man, a strange woman.
IN THE ELEVENTH BURNING, FOUR PERSONS.
Two women and two men.
IN THE TWELFTH BURNING, TWO PERSONS.
Two strange women.
IN THE THIRTEENTH BURNING, FOUR PERSONS.
A little girl nine or ten years old.
A younger girl, her little sister.
IN THE FOURTEENTH BURNING, TWO PERSONS.
The mother of the two little girls before mentioned.
A girl twenty-four years old.
IN THE FIFTEENTH BURNING, TWO PERSONS.
A boy twelve years of age, in the first school.
A woman.
IN THE SIXTEENTH BURNING, SIX PERSONS.
A boy of ten years of age.
IN THE SEVENTEENTH BURNING, FOUR PERSONS.
A boy eleven years old.
A mother and daughter.
IN THE EIGHTEENTH BURNING, SIX PERSONS.
Two boys, twelve years old.
The daughter of Dr. Junge.
A girl of fifteen years of age.
A strange woman.
IN THE NINETEENTH BURNING, SIX PERSONS.
A boy of ten years of age.
Another boy, twelve years old.
IN THE TWENTIETH BURNING, SIX PERSONS.
Gobel's child, the most beautiful girl in Wurzburg.
Two boys, each twelve years old.
Stepper's little daughter.
IN THE TWENTY-FIRST BURNING, SIX PERSONS.
A boy fourteen years old.
The little son of Senator Stolzenberger.
Two alumni.
IN THE TWENTY-SECOND BURNING, SIX PERSONS.
Sturman, a rich cooper.
A strange boy.
IN THE TWENTY-THIRD BURNING, NINE PERSONS.
David Croten's boy, nine years old.
The two sons of the prince's cook, one fourteen, the other ten years old.
IN THE TWENTY-FOURTH BURNING, SEVEN PERSONS.
Two boys in the hospital.
A rich cooper.
IN THE TWENTY-FIFTH BURNING, SIX PERSONS.
A strange boy.
IN THE TWENTY-SIXTH BURNING, SEVEN PERSONS.Weydenbush, a senator.
The little daughter of Valkenberger.
The little son of the town council bailiff.
IN THE TWENTY-SEVENTH BURNING, SEVEN PERSONS.A strange boy.
A strange woman.
Another boy.
IN THE TWENTY-EIGHTH BURNING, SIX PERSONS.
The infant daughter of Dr. Schütz.
A blind girl.
IN THE TWENTY-NINTH BURNING, SEVEN PERSONS.
The fat noble lady (Edelfrau).
A doctor of divinity.
Item.
Summary:
"Strange" men and women, i.e., Protestants, 28
Citizens, apparently all WEALTHY people, 100
Boys, girls, and little children, 34
In nineteen months, 162 persons.
"There were," says Wright, "little girls of from seven to ten years of age among the witches, and seven and twenty of them were convicted and burnt," at some of the other brände, or burnings. "The numbers brought to trial in these terrible proceedings were so great, and they were treated with so little consideration, that it was usual not even to take the trouble of setting down their names, but they were cited as the accused No. 1, No. 2, No. 3, and so on. [6] The Jesuits took their confessions in private."
What room is there in a theology which exacts such holocausts as these to appease the bloody appetites of its priests for the following gentle words:
"Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not; for of such is the kingdom of Heaven." "Even so it is not the will of your Father . . . that one of these little ones should perish." "But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck and that he were drowned in the depths of the sea."
We sincerely hope that the above words have proved no vain threat to these child-burners.
Did this butchery in the name of their Moloch-god prevent these treasure-hunters from resorting to the black art themselves? Not in the least; for in no class were such consulters of "familiar" spirits more numerous than among the clergy during the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries. True, there were some Catholic priests among the victims, but though these were generally accused of having "been led into practices too dreadful to be described," it was not so. In the twenty-nine burnings above catalogued we find the names of twelve vicars, four canons, and two doctors of divinity burnt alive. But we have only to turn to such works as were published at the time to assure ourselves that each popish priest executed was accused of "damnable heresy," i.e., a tendency to reformation — a crime more heinous far than sorcery.
We refer those who would learn how the Catholic clergy united duty with pleasure in the matter of exorcisms, revenge, and treasure-hunting, to volume II., chapter i., of W. Howitt's History of the Supernatural. "In the book called Pneumatologia Occulta et Vera, all the forms of adjuration and conjuration were laid down," says this veteran writer. He then proceeds to give a long description of the favorite modus operandi. The Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie of the late Eliphas Levi, treated with so much abuse and contempt by des Mousseaux, tells nothing of the weird ceremonies and practices but what was practiced legally and with the tacit if not open consent of the Church, by the priests of the middle ages. The exorcist-priest entered a circle at midnight; he was clad in a new surplice, and had a consecrated band hanging from the neck, covered with sacred characters. He wore on the head a tall pointed cap, on the front of which was written in Hebrew the holy word, Tetragrammaton — the ineffable name. It was written with a new pen dipped in the blood of a white dove. What the exorcists most yearned after, was to release miserable spirits which haunt spots where hidden treasures lie. The exorcist sprinkles the circle with the blood of a black lamb and a white pigeon. The priest had to adjure the evil spirits of hell — Acheront, Magoth, Asmodei, Beelzebub, Belial, and all the damned souls, in the mighty names of Jehovah, Adonay, Elohah, and Sabaioth, which latter was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who dwelt in the Urim and Thummim. When the damned souls flung in the face of the exorcist that he was a sinner, and could not get the treasure from them, the priest-sorcerer had to reply that "all his sins were washed out in the blood of Christ, [7] and he bid them depart as cursed ghosts and damned flies." When the exorcist dislodged them at last, the poor soul was "comforted in the name of the Saviour, and consigned to the care of good angels," who were less powerful, we must think, than the exorcising Catholic worthies, "and the rescued treasure, of course, was secured for the Church."
"Certain days," adds Howitt, "are laid down in the calendar of the Church as most favorable for the practice of exorcism; and, if the devils are difficult to drive, a fume of sulphur, assafœtida, bear's gall, and rue is recommended, which, it was presumed, would outstench even devils."
This is the Church, and this the priesthood, which, in the nineteenth century, pays 5,000 priests to teach the people of the United States the infidelity of science and the infallibility of the Bishop of Rome!
We have already noticed the confession of an eminent prelate that the elimination of Satan from theology would be fatal to the perpetuity of the Church. But this is only partially true. The Prince of Sin would be gone, but sin itself would survive. If the Devil were annihilated, the Articles of Faith and the Bible would remain. In short there would still be a pretended divine revelation, and the necessity for self-assumed inspired interpreters. We must, therefore, consider the authenticity of the Bible itself. We must study its pages, and see if they, indeed, contain the commands of the Deity, or but a compendium of ancient traditions and hoary myths. We must try to interpret them for ourselves — if possible. As to its pretended interpreters, the only possible assimilation we can find for them in the Bible is to compare them with the man described by the wise King Solomon in his Proverbs, with the perpetrator of these "six things . . . yea seven . . . which doth the Lord hate," and which are an abomination unto Him, to wit: "A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood; an heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief; a false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren" (Proverbs vi. 16, 17, 18, 19).
Of which of these accusations are the long line of men who have left the imprint of their feet in the Vatican guiltless?
"When the demons," says Augustine, "insinuate themselves in the creatures, they begin by conforming themselves to the will of every one. . . . In order to attract men, they begin by seducing them, by simulating obedience. . . . How could one know, had he not been taught by the demons themselves, what they like or what they hate; the name which attracts, or that which forces them into obedience; all this art, in short, of magic, the whole science of the magicians?" [8]
To this impressive dissertation of the "saint," we will add that no magician has ever denied that he had learned the art from "spirits," whether, being a medium, they acted independently on him, or he had been initiated into the science of "evocation" by his fathers who knew it before himself. But who was it then that taught the exorcist? The priest who clothes himself with an authority not only over the magician, but even over all these "spirits," whom he calls demons and devils as soon as he finds them obeying any one but himself? He must have learned somewhere from some one that power which he pretends to possess. For, ". . . how could one know had he not been taught by the demons themselves . . . the name which attracts, or that which forces them into obedience?" asks Augustine.
Useless to remark that we know the answer beforehand: "Revelation . . . divine gift . . . the Son of God; nay, God Himself, through His direct Spirit, who descended on the apostles as the Pentecostal fire," and who is now alleged to overshadow every priest who sees fit to exorcise for either glory or a gift. Are we then to believe that the recent scandal of public exorcism, performed about the 14th of October, 1876, by the senior priest of the Church of the Holy Spirit, at Barcelona, Spain, was also done under the direct superintendence of the Holy Ghost? [9]
It will be urged that the "bishop was not cognizant of this freak of the clergy"; but even if he were, how could he have protested against a rite considered since the days of the apostles, one of the most holy prerogatives of the Church of Rome? So late as in 1852, only twenty-five years ago, these rites received a public and solemn sanction from the Vatican, and a new Ritual of Exorcism was published in Rome, Paris, and other Catholic capitals. Des Mousseaux, writing under the immediate patronage of Father Ventura, the General of the Theatines of Rome, even favors us with lengthy extracts from this famous ritual, and explains the reason why it was enforced again. It was in consequence of the revival of Magic under the name of Modern Spiritualism. The bull of Pope Innocent VIII. is exhumed, and translated for the benefit of des Mousseaux's readers. "We have heard," exclaims the Sovereign Pontiff, "that a great number of persons of both sexes have feared not to enter into relations with the spirits of hell; and that, by their practice of sorcery . . . they strike with sterility the conjugal bed, destroy the germs of humanity in the bosom of the mother, and throw spells on them, and set a barrier to the multiplication of animals . . . etc., etc."; then follow curses and anathemas against the practice.
This belief of the Sovereign Pontiffs of an enlightened Christian country is a direct inheritance by the most ignorant multitudes from the southern Hindu rabble — the "heathen." The diabolical arts of certain kangalins (witches) and jadugar (sorcerers) are firmly believed in by these people. The following are among their most dreaded powers: to inspire love and hatred at will; to send a devil to take possession of a person and torture him; to expel him; to cause sudden death or an incurable disease; to either strike cattle with or protect them from epidemics; to compose philtres that will either strike with sterility or provoke unbounded passions in men and women, etc., etc. The sight alone of a man said to be such a sorcerer excites in a Hindu profound terror.
And now we will quote in this connection the truthful remark of a writer who passed years in India in the study of the origin of such superstitions: "Vulgar magic in India, like a degenerated infiltration, goes hand-in-hand with the most ennobling beliefs of the sectarians of the Pitris. It was the work of the lowest clergy, and designed to hold the populace in a perpetual state of fear. It is thus that in all ages and under every latitude, side by side with philosophical speculations of the highest character, one always finds the religion of the rabble." [10] In India it was the work of the lowest clergy; in Rome, that of the highest Pontiffs. But then, have they not as authority their greatest saint, Augustine, who declares that "whoever believes not in the evil spirits, refuses to believe in Holy Writ?" [11]
Therefore, in the second half of the nineteenth century, we find the counsel for the Sacred Congregation of Rites (exorcism of demons included), Father Ventura de Raulica, writing thus, in a letter published by des Mousseaux, in 1865:
"We are in full magic! and under false names; the Spirit of lies and impudicity goes on perpetrating his horrible deprecations. . . . The most grievous feature in this is that among the most serious persons they do not attach the importance to the strange phenomena which they deserve, these manifestations that we witness, and which become with every day more weird, striking, as well as most fatal.
"I cannot sufficiently admire and praise, from this standpoint, the zeal and courage displayed by you in your work. The facts which you have collected are calculated to throw light and conviction into the most skeptical minds; and after reading this remarkable work, written with so much learnedness and consciousness, blindness is no longer possible.
"If anything could surprise us, it would be the indifference with which these phenomena have been treated by false Science, endeavoring as she has, to turn into ridicule so grave a subject; the childish simplicity exhibited by her in the desire to explain the facts by absurd and contradictory hypotheses. . . . [12]
[Signed] "The Father Ventura de Raulica, etc., etc."
Thus encouraged by the greatest authorities of the Church of Rome, ancient and modern, the Chevalier argues the necessity and the efficacy of exorcism by the priests. He tries to demonstrate — on faith, as usual — that the power of the spirits of hell is closely related to certain rites, words, and formal signs. "In the diabolical Catholicism," he says, "as well as in the divine Catholicism, potential grace is bound (liée) to certain signs." While the power of the Catholic priest proceeds from God, that of the Pagan priest proceeds from the Devil. The Devil, he adds, "is forced to submission" before the holy minister of God — "he dares not LIE." [14]