CHAPTER III

THE SALIC LAWS AGAINST SORCERERS

Under the rule of the first French kings, the crime of Magic did not entail death save for those of exalted position, while there were some who were proud to die for an offence by which they were raised above the vulgar crowd and became formidable even in the sight of kings. There was the general Mummol, for example, who, on the rack by the orders of Fredegonde, declared that he experienced nothing, who provoked more frightful tortures and died braving the executioners, while the latter were moved to forgive him at the sight of such extra-natural fortitude.[161]

Among the Salic laws, supposed to have been enacted in 474, and attributed to Pharamond by Sigebert, the following ordinances are found.

“If anyone shall testify that another has acted as a _héréburge_ or _strioporte_—titles applied to those who carry the copper vessel to the spot where the vampires perform their enchantments—and if he shall fail to convict him, he shall be condemned hereby to a forfeit of 7,500 _deniers_, being 180½ _sous_.... If anyone shall charge a free woman as a vampire or as a prostitute, and shall fail to prove his words, he shall forfeit 2500 _deniers_, being 62½ _sous_.... If a vampire shall devour a man and be found guilty, she shall forfeit 8000 _deniers_, being 200 _sous_.”

It will be seen that in those times cannibalism was possible on terms and, moreover, that the market-price of human flesh was not at a premium. It cost 180½ _sous_ to slander a man, but for a modicum above that sum he could be killed and eaten, which was at once more honest and thorough. This remarkable legislation recalls an equally curious Talmudic recital, being one which was interpreted after a memorable manner by the famous Rabbi Jechiel in the presence of a certain queen who is not named in the book.[162] It was most likely Queen Blanche, for Rabbi Jechiel lived in the reign of St. Louis. He had been called upon to answer the objections of a converted Jew named Douin, who had received at baptism the Christian name of Nicholas. After various discussions on texts of the Talmud, they came to the following passage: “If anyone shall offer any blood of his children to Moloch, let him die the death.” The Talmud annotates thus: “He therefore who shall offer not a modicum of blood alone but the whole blood and the whole flesh of his children, does not come under the judgment of the law and no penalty is declared against him.” Those who took part in the debate clamoured at a construction which passed all understanding: some laughed in pity, some quivered with indignation. Rabbi Jechiel could scarcely obtain a hearing, and when he succeeded at last, there was every mark of disfavour, to indicate that he was condemned beforehand.

“With us,” said he, “the penalty of death is an atonement and consequently a reconciliation, not an act of vengeance. All who die by the law of Israel die in the peace of Israel; they partake of peace in death, and they sleep with their fathers. No malediction descends with them into the grave; they abide in the immortality of the House of Jacob. Death is therefore a crowning grace; it is the cure of a poisoned wound by the hot iron. But we do not apply the iron to those who are past cure; we have no jurisdiction over those the extent of whose transgression has cut them off for ever from Israel. Such are as now dead, and it is not therefore for us to shorten the term of their reprobation on earth: they are delivered over to the wrath of God. Man is warranted to wound only that he may heal, and we do not apply remedies to those who are beyond recovery. The father of a family punishes only his children and is content to shut the door against strangers. Those great criminals upon whom our law pronounces no sentence are thereby excommunicated for ever, which is a penalty greater than death.”

The explanation of Rabbi Jechiel is admirable and breathes all the patriarchal genius of ancient Israel. Truly the Jews are our fathers in science, and if we—in place of their persecution—had sought to understand them, they would not have been at this day so far alienated from our faith.

The above Talmudic tradition shews the Jewish antiquity of belief in the immortality of the soul.[163] What is this reintegration of the guilty in the family of Israel by an expiatory death unless it be a protest against death itself and a sublime act of faith in the perpetuity of life? Comte Joseph de Maistre understood this doctrine well when he raised the executioner’s sanguinary mission into a kind of peculiar priesthood. The anguish of punishment supplicates, said this great writer, and blood in its outpouring still remains a sacrifice. Were capital punishment other than a plenary absolution it would be nothing but retaliation on murder; the man who suffers his sentence fulfils all his penance and enters by death into the immortal society of the children of God.

The Salic laws were those of a people still in the state of barbarity, where everything is redeemed by a ransom, as in time of war. Slavery still obtained and human life had a debatable and relative value. That must be always purchasable which there is a right to sell, and only money is due for the destruction of an object which has a price in money. The one efficacious legislation of the period was that of the Church, and its councils took the most stringent measures against the vampires and poisoners who went under the name of sorcerers. The Council of Agde in Lower Languedoc, held in 506, pronounced excommunication against them. The first Council of Orléans, convened in 541, condemned divinatory operations; that of Narbonne, in 589, not only visited sorcerers with the greater excommunication but ordained that they should be sold as slaves for the benefit of the poor. The same council decreed public whipping for _amatores diaboli_; meaning no doubt those who were concerned about him, feared him, evoked him and attributed to him power which was in any wise like that of God.[164] We offer our congratulations sincerely to the disciples of M. le Comte de Mirville that they did not live in such days.

While these events were passing in France an eastern visionary was engaged in founding a religion which was also an empire. Was Mahomet an impostor or was he hallucinated? For the Moslems he is still a prophet, and for Arabic scholars the Koran will be always a masterpiece. An unlettered man, a simple camel-driver, he created notwithstanding the most perfect literary monument of his country. His success might pass as miraculous, and the martial fervour of his successors threatened for a moment the liberty of the whole world. But the day came when Asia broke under the iron hand of Charles Martel. That rough soldier tarried little for prayer when there was fighting to be done; when he wanted money he looted monasteries and churches, and even sold ecclesiastical benefices to his warriors. As the priesthood, for these reasons, could not suppose that his arms were blessed by God, his victories were ascribed to Magic. Indeed, religious feeling was so stirred up against him that St. Eucher, the venerable Bishop of Orléans, learned in a vision from an angel that the saints whose churches he had spoliated or profaned forbade him to enter into heaven, and even disinterred his body, which they plunged with his soul into the abyss. St. Eucher communicated the revelation to Boniface, Bishop of Mayence, and to Fulfvad, arch-chaplain of Pepin the Short. The tomb of Charles Martel was opened, the body proved to be missing, the inner side of the stone was blackened as if by burning, a foul smoke exhaled and a great serpent came out. An authentic report of the opening was sent by Boniface to Pepin the Short and Carloman, who were the sons of Charles Martel, praying them to take warning by the dreadful example and to respect holy things. Yet there was little of that virtue on the part of those who violated the grave of a hero on the faith of a dream, and attributed a destruction which had been completely and rapidly accomplished by death itself to the work of hell.[165]

Some extraordinary phenomena, occurring publicly in France, characterised the reign of Pepin the Short. The air seemed to be alive with human shapes; heaven reflected illusory scenes of palaces, gardens, tossing waves, ships in full sail and hosts in battle array. The atmosphere was like a great dream, and the details of these fantastic pageants were visible to everyone. Was it an epidemic attacking the organs of vision or an aerial perturbation projecting illusions on condensed air? Was it not more probably a general delusion occasioned by some intoxicating and pestilential effluvium diffused throughout the atmosphere? The likelihood of the latter explanation is increased by the fact that these visions provoked the populace, who in their imagination beheld sorcerers in the clouds scattering unwholesome powders and poisons with open hands. The country was smitten with sterility, cattle died, and the mortality extended also to human beings.

The occurrences offered an opportunity to circulate a story, the success and credit of which was in proportion to its extravagance. At that time the famous Kabalist Zedekias[166] had a school of occult science, where he taught not indeed the Kabalah but the entertaining speculations arising therefrom and forming the exoteric part of a science which has been ever hidden from the profane. With mythology of this kind Zedekias diverted the minds of his hearers. He told how Adam, the first man, originally created in an almost spiritual estate, abode above our atmosphere, in a light which gave birth at his pleasure to the most wonderful vegetation. He was served by choirs of beautiful beings, fashioned in the likeness of male and female, of whom they were animated reflections, formed from the purest substance of the elements. They were sylphs, salamanders, undines and gnomes; but in his unfallen condition Adam reigned over the gnomes and undines only by the agency of the salamanders and sylphs, who alone had the power of ascending to his aerial paradise.

There was nothing to equal the felicity of our first parents amidst the ministry of the sylphs; they were perishable spirits, but they had incredible skill in building and weaving the light, causing it to flower in a thousand forms, more varied than the most brilliant and fruitful imagination can now conceive. The earthly paradise—so named because it reposed upon the earthly atmosphere—was therefore a domain of enchantments. Adam and Eve slept in palaces of pearls and sapphires; roses sprang up around them and formed a carpet for their feet; they glided over waters in sea-shells drawn by swans; birds communed with them in delicious speech of music; flowers stooped to caress them. But all this was lost by the fall, which cast our progenitors down on earth, and the material bodies which clothed them henceforth are those skins of beasts mentioned in the Bible. They were alone and naked, where no one obeyed their caprice of thought. They forgot their life in Eden, or viewed it only as a dream seen through the glass of memory. But the realms of paradise still and forever extend above the earthly atmosphere, inhabited by sylphs and salamanders, who are thus constituted guardians of man’s domain, like mournful retainers still in the house of a master whose return they expect no more.

Imaginations were fired by these astonishing fictions when the visions of the air began to be seen in the full light of day. They signified unquestionably the descent of sylphs and salamanders in search of their former masters. Voyages to the land of sylphs were talked of on all sides, as we talk at the present day of animated tables and fluidic manifestations. The folly took possession even of strong minds, and it was time for an intervention on the part of the Church, which does not relish the supernatural being hawked in the public streets, seeing that such disclosures, by imperilling the respect due to authority and to the hierarchic chain of instruction, cannot be attributed to the spirit of order and light. The cloud-phantoms were therefore arraigned and accused of being hell-born illusions, while the people—anxious to get something into their hands—began a crusade against sorcerers. The public folly turned to a paroxysm of mania; strangers in country places were accused of descending from heaven and were killed without mercy; imbeciles confessed that they had been abducted by sylphs or demons; others who had boasted like this previously either would not or could not unsay it; they were burned or drowned, and, according to Garinet, the number who perished throughout the kingdom almost exceeds belief.[167] It is the common catastrophe of dramas in which the first parts are played by ignorance or fear.

Such visionary epidemics recurred in the reigns following, and all the power of Charlemagne was put in action to calm the public agitation. An edict, afterwards renewed by Louis the Pious, forbade sylphs to manifest under the heaviest penalties. It will be understood that in the absence of the aerial beings the judgment fell upon those who made a boast of having seen them, and hence they ceased to be seen. The ships in air sailed back to the port of oblivion, and no one claimed any longer to have journeyed through the blue distance. Other popular frenzies replaced the previous mania, while the romantic splendours of the great reign of Charlemagne furnished the makers of legends with new prodigies to believe and new marvels to relate.

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