Part 18

This partiality of devils for flagellation can most probably be attributed to their horribly jealous disposition; for it is well known that the saints took great delight in fustigating, not only those who offended them, but their most faithful votaries. Flagellation was therefore the most grateful punishment that could be inflicted to propitiate the beatified; and we have several well-authenticated facts which prove that the Virgin was frequently appeased by this practice. Under the pontificate of Sextus IV., a heterodox professor of divinity, who had written against the tabernacle, was flogged publicly by a pious monk, to the great edification of the by-standers, more particularly the ladies. The description of this operation would lose materially by translation, I therefore give it in the original. "Apprehendens ipsum revolvit super ejus genua; erat enim valde fortis. Elevatis itaque pannis, quia ille minister contra sanctum Dei tabernaculum locutus fuerat, coepit cum palmis percutere _super quadrata tabernacula_ quae erant nuda, non enim habebat _femoralia vel antiphonam_; et quia ipse infamare voluerat beatam Virginem, allegando forsitan Aristotelem in libro priorum, iste praedicator _illum confutavit legendo in libro ejus posteriorum_: de hoc autem omnes qui aderant gaudebant. Tunc exclamavit _quaedam devota mulier_, dicens, '_Domine Praedicator, detis ei alios quatuor palmatus pro me_; et alia postmodum dixit, 'Detis ei etiam quatuor; sicque _multae aliae_ rogabant, ita quod si illarum petitionibus satisfacere voluisset, per totum diem aliud facere non potuisset."

We need not seek for similar instances of the mighty power of proper fustigation in foreign parts. The Annals of Wales record a singular instance of the kind, which happened in the year 1188, as related by Silvester Gerald, in such a circumstantial manner that the most obdurate incredulity alone could doubt the fact:--"On the other side of the river Humber," he says, "in the parish of Hoeden, lived the rector of that church, with his concubine. This concubine, one day, sat rather imprudently on the tomb of St. Osanna, sister to King Osred, which was made of wood, and raised above the ground in the shape of a seat: when she attempted to rise from that place, she stuck to the wood in such a manner that she could not be parted from it, till, in the presence of the people who flocked to see her, she had suffered her clothes to be torn from her, and had received a severe discipline on her naked body, and that too to a great effusion of blood, and with many tears and devout supplications on her part; which done, and after she had engaged to submit to further penitence, she was divinely released."

In this instance, as in many others, freedom from vulgar habiliments appears to have been considered as acceptable to Heaven; so much so, indeed, that the state of greater or lesser nudity has been commensurate with the degree of the offence. The Cynic philosophers of Greece, among whom Diogenes made himself most conspicuous, used to appear in public without a rag upon them. The Indian wise men, called Gymnosophists, or naked sages, indulged in the same vagaries. In more modern times, the Adamites appeared in the simple condition of our first father. In the 13th century, a sect called _Les Turlupins_ (a denomination which appears to have been an opprobrious nickname), perambulated France, disencumbered of vain accoutrements; and, in 1535, some Anabaptists made an excursion in Amsterdam in the condition in which they had quitted their baths, for which breach of decorum the impious burgomasters had them bastinadoed. We further read of one Friar Juniperus, a worthy Franciscan, who, according to history, "entered the town of Viterboo, and, while he stood within the gate, he put his hose on his head, and his gown being tied round his neck in the shape of a load, he walked through the streets of the town, where he suffered much abuse and maltreatment from the wicked inhabitants; and, still in the same situation, he went to the convent of the brothers, who all exclaimed against him, but he cared little for them, _so holy was the good little brother_ (_tam sanctus fuit iste fraticellus_)."

The pranks of brother Juniper have been performed at sundry periods by various holy men. Are we not warranted in conceiving that these individuals were daemonomaniacs? for surely the devil alone could have inspired them with such fancies, although Cardinal Damian defends the practice in the following terms, when speaking of the day of judgment: "Then shall the sun lose its lustre, the moon shall be involved in darkness; the stars shall fall from their places, and all the elements be confounded together: of what service then will be to you those clothes and garments with which you are now covered, and which you refuse to lay aside, to submit to the exercise of penitence?"

It must be remarked, in extenuation of these exhibitions, that they were accompanied by flagellation; which sometimes bore a close analogy to those of the Saturnalia and Lupercalia, and the discipline of the flagellants was not always dissimilar to that of the Luperci.

To resume: Daemonomania may be considered the result of a morbid condition of the mind, and the dread of supernatural agency. The belief of an incarnation of the devil leads to the natural apprehension of his having taken possession of our bodies, when a credulous creature fancies that he has fallen into his snares, and forsaken the ways of the Omnipotent. This sad delusion has been admirably illustrated by Sir Walter Scott in his curious and learned Demonology. "It is, I think," says he, "conclusive that mankind, from a very early period, have their minds prepared for such events (supernatural occurrences) by the consciousness of the existence of a spiritual world. But imagination is apt to intrude its explanations and inferences founded on inadequate evidence. Sometimes our violent and inordinate passions, originating in sorrow for our friends, remorse for our crimes, our eagerness of patriotism, or our deep sense of devotion,--these, or other violent excitements of a moral character, in the visions of the night, or the rapt ecstasy of the day, persuade us that we witness with our eyes and ears an actual instance of that supernatural communication, the possibility of which cannot be denied. At other times the corporeal organs impose upon the mind, while the eye and the ear, diseased, deranged, or misled, convey false impressions to the patient. Very often both the mental delusion and the physical deception exist at the same time; and men's belief of the phenomena presented to them, however erroneously, by the senses, is the firmer and more readily granted, that the physical impressions corresponded with the mental excitement."

From the foregoing observations we may venture to conclude, that an individual who gives credence to apparitions will also believe in the incarnation of the devil. In both cases we infer that spiritual beings can assume corporeal forms; and, although we may not presume to question the possibility of such appearances when it may please the Omnipotent so to will it, to believe in possession is actually to admit that the devil is a spiritual being endowed with specific attributes and powers, and acting either independently or with the consent of the Almighty. This admission would to a certain extent border on the heresy of the Manicheans, who believed, with the heresiarch Cubricus, that there existed a good and an evil principle coeternal and independent of each other. We find in Holy Writ that indulgence was granted to Satan to visit the earth. But the period when miraculous power ceased, or rather was withdrawn from the church, is not determined. The Protestants bring it down beneath the accession of Constantine, while the Roman Catholic clergy still claim the power of producing or procuring supernatural manifestations when it suits their purpose; but, as Scott justly observes, it is alike inconsistent with the common sense of either Protestant or Roman Catholic, that fiends should be permitted to work marvels, which are no longer exhibited on the part of religion.

Cullen's opinion on this disease is worthy of remark. He says, "I do not allow that there is any true daemonomania, because few people nowadays believe that demons have any power over our bodies or our minds; and, in my opinion, the species recorded are either a species of melancholy or mania,--diseases falsely referred by the spectators to the power of demons,--feigned diseases,--or diseases partly real or partly feigned."

Esquirol, moreover, justly observes, that "in modern times the punishments that the priest denounces have ceased to influence the minds and the conduct of men, and governments have recourse to restraints of a different kind. Many lunatics express now as much dread of the tribunals of justice, as they formerly entertained of the influence of stars and demons."

We frequently meet with despondent monomaniacs labouring under the fatal delusion of having forfeited all hopes of salvation, and being in fact inevitably doomed to perdition, but who are apparently of sound mind when touching upon other subjects. The case of one Samuel Brown was peculiarly striking. This unfortunate man, at a period when all his intellectual faculties were in full vigour, fancied that his rational soul had gradually succumbed under divine displeasure, and that he solely enjoyed an animal life in common with brutes.

Esquirol affirms that this form of lunacy is of rare occurrence, and that out of upwards of 20,000 insane persons whom he has observed, scarcely one case of daemonomania could be found in a thousand, and these were amongst the lowest and most uneducated classes of society. The most powerful charm to withstand the efforts of the evil spirit, is the following one generally made use of in Livonia.

_Two eyes have seen thee--may three eyes deign to cast a favourable look upon thee, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost._

THE PLAGUE.

Pestilential diseases have ever been considered a punishment inflicted on mankind for their manifold offences. The ancients deified the calamity, and viewed it in the light of an avenging god. In the Oedipus of Sophocles, the chorus implore Minerva to preserve them from that divinity, which, without sword or buckler, strews the Theban streets with corpses, and is more invincible than Mars himself. Lucretius describes the plague of Athens as a holy fire,--

Et simul, ulceribus quasi inustis, omne rubore Corpus, ut est, per membra _sacer_ quum diditur _ignis_.

The plague was known in an early era both to the Israelites and to the Greeks, and its ancient and modern histories have descended to us depicted in the most terrific colours, in a regular stream of Hebrew, Greek, Arabic, and Roman writers, in most instances offering little variety from the descriptions of neoteric observers.

The pestilences that visited the Israelites were, however, of a different character. They were also considered as a Divine chastisement of the sins of that stiff-necked nation. This visitation, accurately described in Holy Writ, has led to the most curious disquisitions. Bryant has endeavoured by the most recondite researches to give us the reasons why the Creator thought proper thus to visit his disobedient people. It has been truly observed that the sublime is not far removed from the ridiculous; and it may be said with equal correctness, that enthusiasm in religion too frequently borders upon impiety. Bryant, in his erudite labour, has unhappily fallen into this extreme, in assigning human motives to the decrees of the Deity. This matter is treated in so curious a manner that it will not be irrelevant to notice his bold assertions.

In the first instance, taking the language of the Exodus in the most literal sense, he tells us that the river was turned into blood, _because_ it was a punishment particularly well adapted to that blinded and infatuated people, as a warning to the Israelites of the insufficiency of the false gods that the Egyptians worshipped. They had rendered divine homage to the Nile; and Herodotus informs us that the Persians held their rivers in the highest veneration; while the same worship obtained among the Medes, the Parthians, and the Sarmatians. The Greeks adored the Spercheius, to whose god Peleus vowed the hair of his son; the laureated Peneus, the earth-born Achelous, and the loving Alpheus. For, although it may be said that these streams were merely venerated as the symbols of their respective gods, it is possible that the Greeks might have fallen into the same errors as the worshippers of saintly images in more modern and enlightened times. Therefore, says our learned author, there was a great propriety in the judgment brought upon this people by Moses. They must have felt the utmost astonishment and horror when they beheld the sacred stream changed and polluted, and the divinity which they worshipped so shamefully soiled and debased. Moreover, he tells us that the Egyptian priests were particularly nice and delicate in their outward habits, making constant ablutions; and abhorred blood, or any stain of gore. In this plague the fish that were in the river died, and the river stunk. Now the priests and holy men not only never tasted fish, but looked upon them as deities. A city was built in honour of the god-fish, Oxyrunchus; the Phagrus[12] was worshipped at Syene, the Maeotis at Elephantis, and Antiphanes tells us that the Egyptians equally reverenced the eel.

The second plague were frogs, _because_, further saith our sapient authority, they added to the stink of the land, as they "died out of the houses, out of the villages, and out of the fields, and were gathered together in heaps, and the land stunk," Exodus viii. 13, 14. Bryant candidly confesses that he is rather uncertain if this reptile was an object of reverence, or of abhorrence to the Egyptians; nevertheless, he draws the conclusion that, as the ancients worshipped many deities of dread, and others that they despised, (such as Priapus, Fatua, Vacuna, Cloacina,) Mephitis, or foul effluvia, was held in religious awe,--and, to use his own expressions, since Mephitis "signified stink in the abstract," and had a temple at Cremona, the pestilential emanation from the dead frogs might have been considered as entitled to some reverence.[13] Plutarch tells us that the frog was an emblem of the sun in Egypt, and that the brazen palm-tree at Delphi had many of these animals engraved on its basis. On the Bembine table we find it sitting upon the lotus, a circumstance observed in various ancient gems; the water-lily being, perhaps, congenial to this aquatic tribe, which were denominated the attendants of the deities of streams and fountains. It is also alleged that the frog was deemed an emblem of Apollo and Osiris, from its habit of inflation, which was looked upon as being typical of inspiration. That frogs were considered as evil symbols further appears in the Apocalypse, where we find that "three unclean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet; they are the spirits of devils working miracles."

The third plague was lice, _because_ the Egyptian priests affected great external purity, wore linen under their woollen garments, and shaved their heads, according to Herodotus, every third day, to prevent any louse, or any other detestable object, from finding a comfortable shelter. Some scholastics have ventured to insinuate that this insect was a species of gnat; but St. Jerome and Origen very properly observe that this would have been a presumptious anticipation of the plague of flies, which constituted the _fourth_ visitation, _because_ flies were also held sacred by the Egyptians, and were worshipped under the name of _Achon_, _Acoron_, and _Zebub_, more particularly in the city of _Acaron_ or _Accoron_. Baal was the god of flies, and the fly was worshipped at _Ekron_, where it was called _Baal-ze-bub_,--hence _Belzebub_.

The next plague was the murrain of beasts; _because_ it was necessary that the Israelites should not only see that the cattle of the Egyptians were all infected, while theirs were exempted from the evil; but that their very living symbol of the bull Apis, in whom the soul of Osiris had taken up its dwelling, was affected with epizooty in common with other herds of horned deities, who were called _Dii Stercorei_; though it appears that the ass and the camel were involved in the same calamity.

Our commentator attempts to account for the sixth plague of boils and blains with equal ingenuity. He affirms that this cruel disorder was sent among the Egyptians to show the Israelites that the medical men to whom they attributed divine powers, could neither cure nor alleviate the disease. The science of medicine bequeathed by Isis to her son Orus was of no avail, and the learned records of Tosorthrus yielded no information. In vain did their leeches search their cryptae and sacred caverns, or consult their mystic obelisks, which, according to Manetho, were inscribed with the aphorisms of medical experience; their physicians only increased the number of the _botches_ of the land. The Scriptures state that this pestilential malady was produced by the ashes that Aaron and Moses scattered up towards heaven to be wafted over the country. Bryant also accounts for this circumstance, and attributes this method of extending the calamity to the barbarous practice of the Egyptians of burning human victims and scattering the ashes in the air, in a like manner to propitiate their gods.

The fall of rain, hail, fire, and thunder, that constituted the seventh plague, was a chastisement inflicted on the worshippers of these supposed elements. Their Isis presided over the waters, and Osiris and Hephaistus governed fire. Moreover the flax was smitten, whereby the Egyptians were deprived of the means of making linen, the finest of which was their boast and their pride. The barley was also destroyed, and they had no materials for brewing their favourite potation, barley-wine; a species of beer which constituted their chief beverage when the waters of the Nile were turbid and not potable.[14]

But, according to Jacob Bryant, this destruction was not deemed sufficient, since the fecundity of Egypt would soon have replenished their granaries, manufactures, and breweries; therefore locusts were sent to devour every thing that the former devastation had spared; and this plague was a punishment of their belief that Hercules and Apollo had the power of controlling these ravenous insects, which were called _Parnopes_ and _Cornopes_, whence Apollo was named _Parnopius_, and Hercules _Cornopion_. It also appears that the grasshoppers, or _cicadae_, were venerated, both as sacred and musical; and the Athenians wore golden ones in their hair, to denote the antiquity of their race of earth-born breed.

Now it is somewhat singular, that while our ingenious author makes such learned inquiries to account for the motives that induced God thus to visit the Egyptians, he does not venture to assign motives for similar calamities which befel other nations and countries; although his researches on the subject are so curious and interesting, that they deserve insertion.

The following is the account given by Beauplam of the destructive inroad of these devourers in the Ukraine:--"Next to the flies, let us talk of the grasshoppers or locusts, which here are so numerous, that they put one in mind of the scourge of God sent upon Egypt when he punished Pharaoh. These creatures do not only come in legions, but in whole clouds, five or six leagues in length, and two or three in breadth, eating up all sorts of grain or grass, so that wheresoever they come, in less than two hours they crop all they can find, which causes great scarcity of provisions. It is not easy to express their numbers, for all the air is full and darkened; and I cannot better represent their flight to you, than by comparing it to the flakes of snow driven by the wind in cloudy weather; and when they alight to feed, the plains are all covered. They make a murmuring noise as they eat, and in less than two hours they devour all close to the ground; then rising, they suffer themselves to be carried away by the wind. When they fly, though the sun shines never so bright, the air is no lighter than when most clouded. In June 1646, having stayed in a new town called Novogorod, I was astonished to see so vast a multitude. They were hatched here last spring; and being as yet scarcely able to fly, the ground was all covered, and the air so full of them, that I could not eat in my chamber without a candle, all the houses being full of them, even the stables, barns, chambers, garrets, cellars, &c. I have seen at night, when they sit to rest themselves, that the roads have been four inches thick of them, one upon another. By the wheels of the carts and the feet of our horses bruising these creatures, there came from them such a stink, as not only offended the nose but the brain. I was not able to endure the stench, but was forced to wash my nose with vinegar, and to hold a handkerchief dipped in it to my nostrils perpetually. These vermin increase and multiply thus: they generate in October, and with their tails make a hole in the ground, and having laid three hundred eggs in it, and covered them with their feet, die; for they never live above six months and a half. And though the rains should come, they would not destroy the eggs; nor does the frost, never so sharp, hurt them. But they continue to the spring, which is about mid-April; when the sun warming the earth, they are hatched, and leap about, being six weeks old before they can fly; when stronger, and able to fly, they go wherever the wind carries them. If it should happen that a north-east wind prevails, it carries them all into the black sea; but if the wind blows from any other quarter, they go into some other country to do mischief. I have been told by persons who understand the languages well, that the words _Boze Guion_, which mean the scourge of God, are written in Chaldee characters upon their wings."

Norden mentions that there were supposed to be hieroglyphic marks upon the heads of these insects. Such was the pestilential scourge of the Ukraine; although I do not apprehend that its inhabitants ever worshipped _Parnopius_ or _Cornopion_, or decorated their filthy heads with golden grasshoppers. Other regions were occasionally visited by these insects. Ludolphus, in speaking of Ethiopia, says, "But much more pernicious than these (the numerous serpents) are the locusts, which do not frequent the desert and sandy places, like the serpents, but the places best manured, and orchards laden with fruit. They appear in prodigious multitudes, like a cloud which obscures the sun; nor plants, nor trees, nor shrubs appear untouched, and wherever they feed, what is left appears as it were parched with fire. A general mortality ensues; and regions lie waste for years."