Part 5

"I have seen all denominations of religions exercised by the jerks, gentleman and lady, black and white, young and old, without exception. I passed a meeting-house, where I observed the undergrowth had been cut away for camp meetings, and from fifty to a hundred saplings were left, breast high, on purpose for the people who were jerked to hold by. I observed where they had held on, they had kicked up the earth, as a horse stamping flies."

Every one has heard of the extraordinary scenes which took place in the Cevennes at the close of the seventeenth century.

It was towards the end of the year 1688 a report was first heard, of a gift of prophecy which had shown itself among the persecuted followers of the Reformation, who, in the south of France, had betaken themselves to the mountains. The first instance was said to have occurred in the family of a glass-dealer, of the name of Du Serre, well known as the most zealous Calvinist of the neighbourhood, which was a solitary spot in Dauphine, near Mount Peyra. In the enlarging circle of enthusiasts, Gabriel Astier and Isabella Vincent made themselves first conspicuous. Isabella, a girl of sixteen years of age, from Dauphine, who was in the service of a peasant, and tended sheep, began in her sleep to preach and prophesy, and the Reformers came from far and near to hear her. An advocate, of the name of Gerlan, describes the following scene which he had witnessed. At his request she had admitted him, and a good many others, after nightfall, to a meeting at a chateau in the neighbourhood. She there disposed herself upon a bed, shut her eyes, and went to sleep; in her sleep she chanted in a low tone the Commandments and a psalm; after a short respite she began to preach in a louder voice, not in her own dialect, but in good French, which hitherto she had not used. The theme was an exhortation to obey God rather than man. Sometimes she spoke so quickly as to be hardly intelligible. At certain of her pauses, she stopped to collect herself. She accompanied her words with gesticulations. Gerlan found her pulse quiet, her arm not rigid, but relaxed, as natural. After an interval, her countenance put on a mocking expression, and she began anew her exhortation, which was now mixed with ironical reflections upon the Church of Rome. She then suddenly stopped, continuing asleep. It was in vain they stirred her. When her arms were lifted and let go, they dropped unconsciously. As several now went away, whom her silence rendered impatient, she said in a low tone, but just as if she was awake, "Why do you go away? Why do not you wait till I am ready?" And then she delivered another ironical discourse against the Catholic Church, which she closed with a prayer.

When Boucha, the intendant of the district, heard of the performances of Isabella Vincent, he had her brought before him. She replied to his interrogatories, that people had often told her that she preached in her sleep, but that she did not herself believe a word of it. As the slightness of her person made her appear younger than she really was, the intendant merely sent her to an hospital at Grenoble, where, notwithstanding that she was visited by persons of the Reformed persuasion, there was an end of her preaching,--she became a Catholic!

Gabriel Astier, who had been a young labourer, likewise from Dauphine, went in the capacity of a preacher and prophet into the valley of Bressac, in the Vivarais. He had infected his family: his father, mother, elder brother, and sweetheart, followed his example, and took to prophesying. Gabriel, before he preached, used to fall into a kind of stupor in which he lay rigid. After delivering his sermon, he would dismiss his auditors with a kiss, and the words: "My brother, or my sister, I impart to you the Holy Ghost." Many believed that they had thus received the Holy Ghost from Astier, being taken with the same seizure. During the period of the discourse, first one, then another, would fall down; some described themselves afterwards as having felt first a weakness and trembling through the whole frame, and an impulse to yawn and stretch their arms, then they fell convulsed and foaming at the mouth. Others carried the contagion home with them, and first experienced its effects, days, weeks, months afterwards. They believed--nor is it wonderful they did so--that they had received the Holy Ghost.

Not less curious were the seizures of the Convulsionnaires at the grave of the Abbe Paris, in the year 1727. These Jansenist visionaries used to collect in the church-yard of St Medard, round the grave of the deposed and deceased Deacon, and before long the reputation of the place for working miracles getting about, they fell in troops into convulsions.

Their state had more analogy to that of the Jerkers already described. But it was different. They required, to gratify an internal impulse or feeling, that the most violent blows should be inflicted upon them at the pit of the stomach. Carre de Montgeron mentions, that being himself an enthusiast in the matter, he had inflicted the blows required with an iron instrument, weighing from twenty to thirty pounds, with a round head. And as a convulsionary lady complained that he struck too lightly to relieve the feeling of depression at her stomach, he gave her sixty blows with all his force. It would not do, and she begged to have the instrument used by a tall, strong man, who stood by in the crowd. The spasmodic tension of her muscles must have been enormous; for she received one hundred blows, delivered with such force that the wall shook behind her. She thanked the man for his benevolent aid, and contemptuously censured De Montgeron for his weakness, or want of faith and timidity. It was, indeed, time for issuing the mandate, which, as wit read it, ran:

"De par le roi--Defense a Dieu, De faire miracle en ce lieu."

Turn we now to another subject:--the possessed in the middle ages,--What was their physiological condition? What was really meant then by being possessed? I mean, what were the symptoms of the affection, and how are they properly to be explained? The inquiry will throw further light upon the true relations of other phenomena we have already looked at.

We have seen that Schwedenborg thought that he was in constant communication with the spiritual world; but felt convinced, and avowed, that though he saw his visitants without and around him, they reached him first inwardly, and communicated with his understanding; and thence consciously, and outwardly, with his senses. But it would be a misapplication of the term to say that he was possessed by these spirits.

We remember that Socrates had his demon; and it should be mentioned as a prominent feature in visions generally, that their subject soon identifies one particular imaginary being as his guide and informant, to whom he applies for what knowledge he wishes. In the most exalted states of trance-waking, the guide or demon is continually referred to with profound respect by the entranced person. Now, was Socrates, and are patients of the class I have alluded to, possessed? No! the meaning of the term is evidently not yet hit.

Then there are persons who permanently fancy themselves other beings than they are, and act as such.

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, there prevailed in parts of Europe a seizure, which was called the wolf-sickness. Those affected with it held themselves to be wild beasts, and betook themselves to the forests. One of these, who was brought before De Lancre, at Bordeaux, in the beginning of the sixteenth century, was a young man of Besancon. He avowed himself to be huntsman of the forest lord, his invisible master. He believed, that through the power of his master, he had been transformed into a wolf; that he hunted in the forest as such, and that he was often accompanied by a bigger wolf, whom he suspected to be the master he served--with more details of the same kind. The persons thus affected were called Wehrwolves. They enjoyed in those days the alternative of being exorcised or executed.

Arnold relates in his history of church and of heresy, how there was a young man in Koenigsberg, well educated, the natural son of a priest, who had the impression, that he was met near a crucifix in the wayside by seven angels, who revealed to him that he was to represent God the Father on earth, to drive all evil out of the world, &c. The poor fellow, after pondering upon this impression a long time, issued a circular commencing thus,--

"We, John Albrecht, Adelgreif, Syrdos, Amata, Kanemata, Kilkis, Mataldis, Schmalkilimundis, Sabrundis, Elioris, Overarch High-priest, and Emperor, Prince of Peace of the whole world, Overarch King of the Holy Kingdom of Heaven, Judge of the living and of the dead, God and Father, in whose divinity Christ will come on the last day to judge the world, Lord of all Lords, King of all Kings," &c.

He was thereupon thrown into prison at Koenigsberg, regarded as a most frightful heretic, and every means were used by the clergy to reclaim him. To all their entreaties, however, he listened only with a smile of pity, "that they should think of reclaiming God the Father." He was then put to the torture; and as what he endured made no alteration in his convictions, he was condemned to have his tongue torn out with red-hot tongs, to be cut in four quarters, and then burned under the gallows. He wept bitterly, not at his own fate, but that they should pronounce such a sentence on the Deity. The executioner was touched with pity, and entreated him to make a final recantation. But he persisted that he was God the Father, whether they pulled his tongue out by the roots or not; and so he was executed!

The Wehrwolves, and this poor creature, in what state were they? they were merely insane. Then we must look further.

Gmelin, in the first volume of his Contributions to Anthropology, narrates, that in the year 1789, a German lady, under his observation, had daily paroxysms, in which she believed herself to be, and acted the part of a French emigrant. She had been in distress of mind through the absence of a person she was attached to, and he was somehow implicated in the scenes of the French revolution. After an attack of fever and delirium, the complaint regulated itself, and took the form of a daily fit of trance-waking. When the time for the fit approached, she stopped in her conversation, and ceased to answer when spoken to; she then remained a few minutes sitting perfectly still, her eyes fixed on the carpet before her. Then, in evident uneasiness, she began to move her head backwards and forwards, to sigh, and to pass her fingers across her eye-brows. This lasted a minute, then she raised her eyes, looked once or twice around with timidity and embarrassment, then began to talk in French; when she would describe all the particulars of her escape from France, and, assuming the manner of a French woman, talk purer and better accented French than she had been known to be capable of talking before, correct her friends when they spoke incorrectly, but delicately and with a comment on the German rudeness of laughing at the bad pronunciation of strangers; and if led herself to speak or read German, she used a French accent, and spoke it ill; and the like.

Now, suppose this lady, instead of thus acting, when the paroxysms supervened, had cast herself on the ground, had uttered bad language and blasphemy, and had worn a sarcastic and malignant expression of countenance,--in striking contrast with her ordinary character and behaviour, and _alternating with it_,--and you have the picture and the reality of a person "possessed."

A person, "possessed," is one affected with the form of trance-waking called double consciousness, with the addition of being deranged when in the paroxysm, and then, out of the suggestions of her own fancy, or catching at the interpretation put on her conduct by others, believing herself tenanted by the fiend.

We may quite allowably heighten the above picture by supposing that the person in her trance, in addition to being mad, might have displayed some of the perceptive powers occasionally developed in trance; and so have evinced, in addition to her demoniacal ferocity, an "uncanny" knowledge of things and persons. To be candid, Archy, time was, when I should myself have had my doubts in such a case.

We have by this time had intercourse enough with spirits and demons to prepare us for the final subject of witchcraft.

The superstition of witchcraft stretches back into remote antiquity, and has many roots. In Europe it is partly of Druidical origin. The Druidesses were part priestesses, part shrewd old ladies, who dealt in magic and medicine. They were called _all-rune_, all-knowing. There was some touch of classical superstition mingled in the stream which was flowing down to us;--so an edict of a council of Treves, in the year 1310, has this injunction: "Nulla mulierum se nocturnis horis equitare cum Diana propitiatur; haec enim doemoniaca est illusio." But the main source from which we derived this superstition, is the East, and traditions and facts incorporated in our religion. There were only wanted the ferment of thought of the fifteenth century, the vigour, energy, ignorance, enthusiasm, and faith of those days, and the papal denunciation of witchcraft by the famous Bull of Innocent the VIII. in 1459, to give fury to the delusion. And from this time for three centuries, the flames, at which more than 100,000 victims perished, cast a lurid light over Europe.

One ceases to wonder at this ugly stain in the page of history, when one considers all things fairly.

The Enemy of mankind, bodily, with horns, hoofs, and tail, was believed to lurk round every corner, bent upon your spiritual, if not bodily harm. The witch and the sorcerer were not possessed by him against their will, but went out of their way to solicit his alliance, and to offer to forward his views for their own advantage, or to gratify their malignity. The cruel punishments for a crime so monstrous were mild, compared with the practice of our own penal code fifty or sixty years ago against second-class offences. And for the startling bigotry of the judges, which appears the most discreditable part of the matter, why, how could they alone be free from the prejudices of their age? Yet they did strange things.

At Lindheim, Horst reports, on one occasion six women were implicated in a charge of having disinterred the body of a child to make a witch-broth. As they happened to be innocent of the deed, they underwent the most cruel tortures before they would confess it. At length they saw their cheapest bargain was to admit the crime, and be simply burned alive and have it over. So they did so. But the husband of one of them procured an official examination of the grave; when the child's body was found in its coffin safe and sound. What said the Inquisitor? "This is indeed a proper piece of devil's work; no, no, I am not to be taken in by such a gross and obvious imposture. Luckily the women have already confessed the crime, and burned they must and shall be in honour of the Holy Trinity, which has commanded the extirpation of sorcerers and witches." The six women were burned alive accordingly.

It was hard upon them, because they were innocent. But the regular witches, as times went, hardly deserved any better fate--considering, I mean, their honest and straight-forward intentions of doing that which they believed to be the most desperate wrong achievable. Many there were who sought to be initiated in the black art. They were re-baptized with the support of responsible witch sponsors, abjured Christ, and entered to the best of their belief into a compact with the devil; and forthwith commenced a course of bad works, poisoning and bewitching men and cattle, and the like, or trying to do so.

One feature transpired in these details, that is merely pathetic, not horrifying or disgusting.

The little children of course talked witchcraft, and you may fancy, Archy, what charming gossip it must have made. Then the poor little things were sadly wrought on by the tales they told. And they fell into trances and had visions shaped by their heated fancies.

A little maid, of twelve years of age, used to fall into fits of sleep, and afterwards she told her parents, and _the judge_, how an old woman and her daughter, riding on a broom-stick, had come and taken her out with them. The daughter sat foremost, the old woman behind, the little maid between them. They went away through the roof of the house, over the adjoining houses and the town gate, to a village some way off. There they went down a chimney of a cottage into a room, where sat a tall black man and twelve women. They eat and drank. The black man filled their glasses from a can, and gave each of the women a handful of gold. She herself had received none; but she had eaten and drank with them.

A list of persons burned in Salzburg for participation in witchcraft between the years 1627 and 1629 in an outbreak of this frenzy, which had its origin in an epidemic among the cattle, enumerates children of 14, 12, 11, 10, 9, years of age; which in some degree reconciles one to the fate of the fourteen canons, four gentlemen of the choir, two young men of rank, a fat old lady of rank, the wife of a burgomaster, a counsellor, the fattest burgess of Wartzburg, together with his wife, the handsomest woman in the city, and a midwife of the name of Schiekelte, with whom (according to an N.B. in the original report) the whole mischief originated. To amateurs of executions in those days the fatness of the victim was evidently a point of consideration, as is shown by the specifications of that quality in some of the victims in the above list. Were men devils _then_? By no means; there existed then as now upon earth, worth, honour, truth, benevolence, gentleness. But there were other ingredients, too, from which the times are not yet purged. A century ago people did not know--do they now?--that vindictive punishment is a crime; that the only allowable purpose of punishment is to prevent the recurrence of the offence; and that restraint, isolation, employment, instruction, are the extreme and only means towards that end which reason and humanity justify. Alas, for human nature! Some centuries hence, the first half of the nineteenth century will be charged with having manifested no admission of principle in advance of a period, the judicial crimes of which make the heart shudder. The old lady witches had, of course, much livelier ideas than the innocent children, on the subject of their intercourse with the devils.

At Mora, in Sweden, in 1669, of many who were put to the torture and executed, seventy-two women agreed in the following avowal, that they were in the habit of meeting at a place called Blocula. That on their calling out "Come forth!" the Devil used to appear to them in a gray coat, red breeches, gray stockings, with a red beard, and a peaked hat with party-coloured feathers on his head. He then enforced upon them, not without blows, that they must bring him, at nights, their own and other peoples' children, stolen for the purpose. They travel through the air to Blocula either on beasts or on spits, or broomsticks. When they have many children with them, they rig on an additional spar to lengthen the back of the goat or their broom-stick that the children may have room to sit. At Blocula they sign their name in blood and are baptized. The Devil is a humorous, pleasant gentleman; but his table is coarse enough, which makes the children often sick on their way home, the product being the so-called witch-butter found in the fields. When the Devil is larky, he solicits the witches to dance round him on their brooms, which he suddenly pulls from under them, and uses to beat them with till they are black and blue. He laughs at this joke till his sides shake again. Sometimes he is in a more gracious mood, and plays to them lovely airs upon the harp; and occasionally sons and daughters are born to the Devil, which take up their residence at Blocula.

I will add an outline of the history, furnished or corroborated by her voluntary confession, of a lady witch, nearly the last executed for this crime. She was, at the time of her death, seventy years of age, and had been many years sub-prioress of the convent of Unterzell, near Wartzburg.