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THE 
 
 Magic of the Middle Ages 
 
 VIKTOR RYDBERG 
 
 Translated from the Swedish 
 
 AUGUST HJALMAK EDGEEN 
 
 
 W 1879. ^ 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 
 1879 
 
 

 Copyright 1879, 
 
 BY 
 
 Henry Holt & Co 
 
^ ? u 
 
 CONTESTS. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 I. The Cosmic Philosophy of the Middle Ages, 
 
 AND ITS HlSTOEICAL DEVELOPMENT .... 1 
 
 II. The Magio of the Church 56 
 
 III. The Magic of the Learned 95 
 
 IY. The Magic of the People and tee Struggle 
 
 of the Church against it 158 
 
 • 
 
THE COSMIC PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES, 
 AND ITS HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 It was the belief of Europe during the 
 Middle Ages, that our globe was the centre 
 of the universe. 
 
 The earth, itself fixed and immovable, was 
 encompassed by ten heavens successively en- 
 circling one another, and all of these except 
 the highest in constant rotation about their 
 centre. 
 
 This highest and immovable heaven, envel- 
 oping all the others and constituting the 
 boundary between created things and the 
 void, infinite space beyond, is the Empyrean, 
 the heaven of fire, named also by the Platon- 
 izing philosophers the world of archetypes. 
 Here "in a light which no one can enter,' 7 
 Grod in triune majesty is sitting on his throne, 
 while the tones of harmony from the nine 
 
 
2 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 revolving heavens beneath ascend to him, 
 like a hymn of glory from the universe 
 to its Creator. 
 
 Next in order below the Empyrean is the 
 heaven of crystal, or the sphere of the first 
 movable (primum mobile). Beneath this re- 
 volves the heaven of fixed stars, which, formed 
 from the most subtile elements in the uni- 
 verse, are devoid of weight. If now an angel 
 were imagined to descend from this heaven 
 straight to earth, — the centre, where the 
 coarsest particles of creation are collected, — ■ 
 he would still sink through seven vaulted 
 spaces, which form the planetary world. In 
 the first of these remaining heavens is found 
 the planet Saturn, in the second Jupiter, 
 in the third Mars; to the fourth and middle 
 heaven belongs the Sun, queen of the planets, 
 while in the remaining three are the paths 
 of Venus, Mercury, and finally the moon, 
 measuring time with its waning and increas- 
 ing disk. Beneath this heaven of the moon 
 is the enveloping atmosphere of the earth, 
 and earth itself with its lands and seas. 
 
MEDIEVAL COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. 3 
 
 There are four prime elements in the struct- 
 ure of the universe: fire, air, water and earth. 
 Every thing existing in the material world is 
 a peculiar compound of these elements, and 
 possesses as such an energy of its own; but 
 matter in itself is devoid of quality and force. 
 All power is spiritual, and flows from a spir- 
 itual source, — from God, and is communicated 
 to the earth and the heavens above the earth 
 and all things in them, by spiritual agents, 
 personal but bodiless. These beings fill the 
 universe. Even the prime elements derive 
 their energy from them. They are called in- 
 telligences or angels; and the primum mobile 
 as well as the heaven of fixed stars is held 
 in motion by % them. The planets are guided 
 in their orbits by angels. "All the energies 
 of plants, metals, stones and all other objects, 
 are derived from those intelligences whom 
 God has ordained to be the guardians and 
 leaders of his works."* u God, as the source 
 and end of all power, lends the seal of ideas 
 
 * Henri cus Cornelius Agrippa ab Nettesheiin : "De occulta 
 Philosophia." — I., xm. 
 
4 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 to his ministering spirits, who, faithfully exe- 
 cuting his divine will, stamp with a vital en- 
 ergy all things committed to their care."* 
 
 No inevitable causation is admitted. Every 
 thing is produced by the will of God, and 
 upheld by it. The laws of nature are noth- 
 ing but the precepts in accordance with which 
 the angels execute their charge. They obey 
 from love and fear; but should they in a re- 
 fractory spirit transgress the given command- 
 ments, or cease their activity, which they 
 have the power to do, then the order of na- 
 ture would be changed, and the great mech- 
 anism of the universe fall asunder, unless God 
 saw fit to interpose. "Sometimes God sus- 
 pends their agency, and is himself the imme- 
 diate actor everywhere; or he gives unusual 
 commandments to his angels, and then their 
 operations are called miracles. 7 ' f 
 
 A knowledge of the nature of things is 
 consequently in the main a knowledge of the 
 
 * Henri cus Cornelius Agrippa ab Nettesheim : 'De occulta 
 Philosophia."— I., xin. 
 t Ibidem, 
 
MEDIAEVAL COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. 5 
 
 angels. Their innumerable hosts form nine 
 choirs or orders, divided into three hierar- 
 chies, corresponding to the three worlds : the 
 empyreal, that of the revolving heavens, and 
 the terrestrial. The orders of Seraphim, Cher- 
 ubim and Thrones which constitute the first 
 hierarchy, are nearest God. They surround 
 his throne like a train of attendants, re- 
 joice in the light of his countenance, feel the 
 abundant inspiration of his wisdom, love and 
 power, and chant eternal praises to his glory. 
 The order of the Thrones, which is the lowest 
 in this empyreal hierarchy, proclaims God's 
 will to the middle hierarchy, to which is given 
 the rule of the movable heavens. It is the 
 order of Dominion which thus receives the 
 commands of God ; that of Power, which 
 guides the stars and planets in their orbits, 
 and brings to pass all other celestial phenom- 
 ena, carries them into execution, while a 
 third of Empire wards off every thing which 
 could interfere with their accomplishment. 
 The third and lowest hierarchy, embracing the 
 orders of Principalities, Archangels and An- 
 
6 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 gels, holds supremacy over terrestrial things. 
 Principalities, as the name implies, are the 
 guardian spirits of nations and kingdoms ; 
 Archangels protect religion, and bear the 
 prayers of saints on high to the throne of 
 God; Angels, finally, have the care of every 
 mortal, and impart to beasts, plants, stones 
 and metals their peculiar nature. Together 
 these hierarchies and orders form a continu- 
 ous chain of intermingling activities, and thus 
 the structure of the universe resembles a Ja- 
 cob's ladder, upon which 
 
 Celestial powers, mounting and descending, 
 Their golden buckets ceaseless interchange." 
 
 All terrestrial things are images of the ce 
 lestial; and all celestial have their archetypes 
 in the Empyrean. Things on earth are com- 
 posed of the coarsest of all matter ; things 
 in the surrounding heavens of a finer sub- 
 stance, accessible to the influence of intel- 
 ligences. Archetypes are immaterial; and as 
 such may be filled without resistance with 
 spiritual forces, and give of their plenitude to 
 
MEDIAEVAL COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. 7 
 
 their corresponding effigies in the worlds of 
 stars and planets. These again through their 
 rays send, forth of the abundance of their 
 power to those objects on earth by which 
 they are represented. Every thing on earth 
 is consequently not only under the guidance 
 of its own angel, but also under the influence 
 of stars, planets, and archetypes. The uni- 
 verse is a vast lyre whose strings, struck no 
 matter where, are sure to vibrate throughout 
 their length. 
 
 It was for man that God called forth the 
 four elements from nothing by his fiat, and it 
 was for man that he fashioned this wonderful 
 earth from those elements in six days. Man 
 is the crown of creation, its master-piece, and 
 within the narrow limits of his nature an epit- 
 ome of all things existing, — a microcosm, and 
 the image of the supreme God himself. 
 
 But since man, as a microcosm, must par- 
 take also of the coarsest matter, his dwell- 
 ing-place could not be within the Empyrean, 
 but must be fixed on earth. In order that 
 it might be worthy to receive him, it was 
 
8 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 adorned with all the beauty of a paradise, 
 and angels gazed from heaven with delight 
 upon its vales and mountains, its lakes and 
 groves, which in changing lights and shadows 
 shone now with the purple of morning, now 
 with the gold of the sun, and again with the 
 silver of the moon. And this, place of hab- 
 itation explains symbolically by its very posi- 
 tion the destiny of man and his place in the 
 kingdom of Grod; for wherever he wanders, 
 the zenith still lingers over his head, and all 
 the revolving heavens have his habitation for 
 their centre. The dance of the stars is but a 
 fete in honor of him, the sun and moon exist 
 but to shine upon his pathway and fill his 
 heart with gladness. 
 
 The first human beings lived in this their 
 paradise in a state of highest happiness. Their 
 will was undepraved; their understanding filled 
 with the immediate light of intuition. Often 
 when the angel of the sun sank with his 
 gleaming orb towards the horizon and "day 
 was growing cool, 77 God himself descended 
 from his Empyrean to wander under the love- 
 
MEDIAlVAL cosmic philosophy. 9 
 
 ly trees of paradise, in the company of his 
 favored ones. 
 
 The world was an unbroken harmony. 
 There was, to be sure, a contrast between 
 spirit and matter, but as yet none between 
 good and evil. It was not long to remain 
 thus. 
 
 Lucifer, that is the Light-bringer, or Morn- 
 ing Star, was the highest of all angels, the 
 prince of seraphim, the favorite of the Cre- 
 ator, and in purity, majesty and power in- 
 ferior only to the Holy Trinity. Pride and 
 envy took possession, it is not known how, 
 of this mighty spirit. He conceived the plan 
 of overthrowing the power of God, and seat- 
 ing himself upon the throne of Omnipotence. 
 Angels of all orders were won over to his 
 treason. At the first beck of the reckless 
 spirit numberless intelligences from the lower 
 heavens and from earth assailed the Empy- 
 rean and joined themselves to the rebellious 
 seraphim, cherubim and thrones who had 
 flocked to the standard of revolt. In heaven 
 raged a mighty contest, the vicissitudes of 
 
10 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 which are covered by the veil of mystery. 
 St. John, however, in his Book of Revela- 
 tion, lifts a single fold of it, and shows us 
 Michael at the head of the legions of God 
 battling against Lucifer. The contest ended 
 with the overthrow of the rebel and his fol- 
 lowers. The beautiful Morning Star fell from 
 heaven.* Christ beheld the once faithful ser- 
 aph hurled from its ramparts like a thunder- 
 bolt from the clouds. f 
 
 The conquered was not annihilated. Calm 
 in the consciousness of omnipotence, God in- 
 scrutably determined that Lucifer, changed 
 by his rebellion into a spirit wholly evil, 
 should enjoy liberty of action within certain 
 limits. The activity of the fallen spirit con- 
 sists in desperate and incessant warfare against 
 God; and he gains in the beginning a victo- 
 ry of immeasurable consequence. He tempts 
 man, and brings him under his dominion. 
 
 * This passage, directed against the ruler of Assyria, was al- 
 ready interpreted by the early fathers as having reference to 
 Satan. Thus Lucifer, the Latin translation for Morning Star, 
 came to be a name for the prince of darkness. 
 
 t Luke x. 18. 
 
MEDIAEVAL COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. 11 
 
 Humanity, as well as the beautiful earth 
 which is its abode, is under the curse of 
 God. 
 
 The world is no longer an unbroken har- 
 mony, a moral unity. It is divided forever 
 into two antagonistic kingdoms, those of Good 
 and Evil. That God so wills, and permits 
 the inevitable consequences, is confirmed by 
 an immediate change in the structure of the 
 universe. Death is sent forth commissioned 
 to destroy all life. Hell opens its jaws in 
 the once peaceful realms of earth's bosom, 
 and is filled with a fire which burns every 
 thing, but consumes nothing. 
 
 The battle-field is the whole creation ex- 
 cept the spaces of the Empyrean; for into its 
 pure domain nothing corrupt can enter. Lu- 
 cifer still adheres to his claims upon its throne, 
 and in every thing seeks to imitate God. The 
 fallen seraphim, cherubim and thrones consti- 
 tute his princely retinue and his council of 
 war. The rebel intelligences of the middle 
 hierarchy, now transformed into demons, still 
 love to rove among the same stars and plan- 
 
12 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 ets which were once confided to their care, 
 and war against the good angels who now 
 guide the movements of the heavens. Other 
 demons float upon the atmosphere, causing 
 storm and thunder, hail and snow, drouth 
 and awful omens (whence it is said the devil 
 is a prince who controls the weather). Others 
 again fill the earth; its seas, lakes, fountains 
 and rivers; its woods, groves, meadows and 
 mountains. They pervade the elements; they 
 are everywhere. 
 
 Man, the chief occasion of the strife, is in 
 a sad condition. The bodily pains and suf- 
 ferings which the earth since its curse heaps 
 upon the path that successive generations, 
 all partakers of Adam's sin, must tread, are 
 as nothing compared with the perils which 
 on all sides assail and threaten their im- 
 mortal souls. And how can these dangers 
 be averted ? Each mortal is indeed followed 
 from his birth by a guardian angel; but how 
 can his promptings be distinguished from those 
 that issue from the thousand hidden agents of 
 the Evil. Lucifer can transform himself into 
 
MEDIEVAL COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. 13 
 
 an angel of light, his demons can entice with 
 a voice which counterfeits that of God and 
 conscience. Man's will has no power to re- 
 sist these temptations; it is depraved by the 
 fall. Reason gives no guidance; darkened on 
 account of man's apostasy, it degenerates, if 
 left to itself, into a Satanic instrument of 
 heresy and error. Feeling is in subjection to 
 matter, which, already from the beginning 
 opposed to spirit, shares the curse. Is it 
 then to be wondered at that the career of 
 man, beginning with conception in a sinful 
 womb, has for its end, behind the portals of 
 death, the eternal torments of a hell? All 
 these myriads of souls created by God and 
 clothed in garments of clay, — all these mi- 
 crocosms, each of which is a master-piece, the 
 glory of creation, a being of infinite value, 
 form, link by link, a chain extending from 
 that nothingness out of which God has cre- 
 ated them, to that abyss in which, after a 
 brief life on earth, they must be tormented 
 through countless ages, despairing and curs- 
 ing their Creator. 
 
14 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 Lucifer triumphs. His kingdom increases; 
 but the poor mortal has no right to complain. 
 The vessel must not blame the potter. When 
 man looks into his own heart he discovers a 
 sinfulness and depravity as infinite as are his 
 punishments. However severe the law of the 
 universe appears, it still bears the impress of 
 divine justice. 
 
 It is, therefore, but an act of pure grace, 
 when God determines the salvation of man- 
 kind. The Church, prepared for by the elec- 
 tion of the Jewish people, and founded by 
 Jesus Christ the Son of God, who offered 
 himself for crucifixion to atone for the sins 
 of men, has grown up and disseminated its 
 influences throughout regions where once de- 
 mons, the gods of the heathen, possessed 
 temples, idols and altars. The Church is the 
 magic circle within which alone is salvation 
 possible {Extra ecclesiam nullus solus). With- 
 in her walls the Son of God offers himself 
 daily as a sacrifice for the transgressions of 
 humanity; the Communion wine is by a mir- 
 acle changed into his blood, and the bread 
 
MEDIAEVAL COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. 15 
 
 into his flesh, which, eaten by the members 
 of the Church, promote their growth in holi- 
 ness and their power of resistance to the 
 Tempter. The Church is one body, anima- 
 ted by the Holy Spirit of God; and thus one 
 member compensated by surplus of virtue 
 for the deficiencies of another. Holy men, 
 resigning all sensual delights, and devoting 
 their lives to the practice of penance and se- 
 verities, the contemplation of spiritual things, 
 and doing good, accumulate thereby a wealth 
 of supererogatory works, which, deposited in 
 the treasury of the Church, enables her to 
 compound for the sins of less self-denying 
 members. With liberal hand she grants re- 
 mission of sins not to the living merely, but 
 also to the dead. Thus the race of men may 
 breathe more freely, and the multitude attach 
 themselves again to the transient joys and 
 pleasures of a wretched life on earth; and 
 when a mortal plucks the flowers of pleasure 
 which bloom in this vale of sorrows, he need 
 not fear so much its hidden poison, for the 
 remedy is near at hand. The knight in the 
 
16 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 castle yonder on the summit of the crag, or 
 the burgher beneath him in the valley, may 
 without scruple take a wife, rear children and 
 live in conviviality according to his means; 
 the happy student may sing and realize his 
 " Oaudeamus igitur") the undaunted soldier 
 may seek a recompense for the hardships of 
 his campaign by a merry life in taverns and 
 in women's company; even the followers of 
 Mary Magdalene, sinning in expectation of 
 grace, may obtain at the feet of the Church 
 the same absolution which was given to their 
 model at the feet of Jesus, provided only 
 that, grateful for the mercy of Christ, who 
 has made them members of his Church, they 
 venerate it as their mother, partake of its 
 sacraments, and seek its aid. The continu- 
 ally increasing number of cloisters, the homes 
 of rigorous self-denial, uninterrupted penance, 
 and mysterious contemplation, is a guarantee 
 of the inexhaustibleness of those works of 
 supererogation which the Church possesses. 
 In these cloisters young maidens, who have 
 consecrated themselves to Christ after a spirit- 
 
MEDIAL VAL COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. 17 
 
 ual embrace for which the most intense im- 
 pulses of their nature have been suppressed, 
 yearn away their lives. Here in prayer and 
 toil the pious recluse spends his days and 
 nights. Those men also who, going forth 
 barefooted, covered with coarse mantles, and 
 wearing ropes about their waists, devote 
 themselves like the apostles to poverty and 
 the preaching of the gospel, who receive char- 
 ity at the door of the layman, giving him in 
 exchange the food of the word of God, — 
 these all issue from the same cloisters. 
 
 Thus is the Church a mole against the tide 
 of Sin. The Christian has some reason to ex- 
 claim: " hell, where is thy victory? " for al- 
 though the place of torment is continually 
 filled with lost spirits, there are thousands 
 upon thousands of ransomed souls that wing 
 their flight to the Empyrean, — whether im- 
 mediately or by the way of Purgatory. First 
 among the beatified who mingling with an- 
 gels surround the throne of God, are those 
 called saints. Their intercession is more effi- 
 cacious even than that of seraphim, and their 
 
18 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 power in the contest against the demons sur- 
 passes that of cherubim. Therefore king- 
 doms, communities, orders, corporations and 
 guilds, yea, even lawless and disreputable 
 professions (so needing grace and interces- 
 sion more than others) have their patron 
 saints. The individual finally is protected by 
 the saint in whose name he has been baptized. 
 The Church is the kingdom of God on 
 earth; her ecclesiastical hierarchy is an im- 
 age of the heavenly; her highest ruler, the 
 Pope, is God's vicar. Her destiny, which is 
 extension over the whole earth so as to include 
 all lands and nations within her magic circle, 
 could not be realized unless she possessed 
 the power to command the kings and armies 
 of Christendom. It is evident, moreover, that 
 spiritual power is above secular: the former 
 protects the soul, the latter the body only. 
 They stand related to one another as spirit is 
 related to matter. Therefore it must be the 
 Pope who shall invest with the highest secu- 
 lar dignity, — that of the Roman Ca3sars. He 
 is the feudal lord of the emperors, as the em- 
 
MEDIAEVAL COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. 19 
 
 peror is, or should be, of the kings, dukes 
 and free cities. Were it not thus, — if the 
 various rulers were independent of the guar- 
 dians of religion, — then woe to the great 
 mass of their subjects ! To be sure these 
 multitudes are placed on earth to be disci- 
 plined by humanity and obedience; they have 
 indeed no rights upon which they may insist, 
 since they stand outside the pale of freedom; 
 but, on the other hand, the oppression exer- 
 cised upon them would have no limit unless 
 the Church, who is the common mother of 
 all, reminded those in authority of their duty 
 to love and cherish the lowly: indeed, all so- 
 cial order would crumble into dust, did not a 
 higher power than that dependent upon the 
 sword compel the stronger to fulfil those vows 
 to protect the weaker which he made in the 
 presence of the Holy Trinity. For the only 
 existing rights are those of privilege and 
 investiture, founded absolutely upon sealed 
 stipulations. 
 
 According to the doctrines of the Church, 
 which are the only key to salvation, man 
 
20 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 has received as a gift what he never could 
 have attained by science, — a knowledge of 
 the highest truths. Possessed of this knowl- 
 edge he must no longer allow himself to be 
 tempted by the devil to engage in efforts to 
 penetrate the mysteries of the universe with 
 nothing to aid him but his darkened intellect; 
 for such attempts generally end in error and 
 apostasy. Still the allurement is strong be- 
 cause the highest truths, when clothed in 
 the garb of human conceptions, sometimes 
 appear self-contradictory and absurd. They 
 must therefore be submitted, not to the de- 
 cisions of reason, but the arbitration of faith. 
 Faith alone is able to penetrate and appre- 
 hend them. The doctrines which the Church, 
 assisted by the Holy Spirit, promulgates, 
 since they alone are true, offer to the believ- 
 ing investigator a mine of infinite treasures. 
 There is consequently possible within the 
 Church a system of philosophy, provided that 
 its processes, always postulating the infalli- 
 bility of the dogmas, be confined to devout 
 analysis and humble contemplation of relig- 
 
MEDIEVAL COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. 21 
 
 ious tenets. For such a purpose the adhe- 
 rent of the scholastic philosophy may employ 
 the Aristotelian dialectics as he chooses, and 
 wield the lever of syllogism at his pleasure. 
 Even within the pale of orthodoxy there 
 may arise many an if and hut, many a pro 
 and contra. The scholastic reasoner has to 
 prove but the most probable ; the infallible 
 Pope and his synods sanction the true de- 
 ductions and refute the errors which, when 
 recanted, are forgiven. It is best for the in- 
 quirer to found his researches on the prop- 
 ositions laid down by the early fathers of 
 the Church; for thus succeeding generations 
 will build on foundations laid for them by 
 their predecessors long before. Inasmuch as 
 they all follow the same dialectic method of 
 analysis and synthesis, so that the whole sub- 
 ject is pervaded and its masses grouped into 
 architectural order by these processes, there 
 is reared on the basis of the dogma a philo- 
 sophical superstructure, resembling those cu- 
 polas with which the skilful masters of ma- 
 sonry amaze our eyes. 
 
22 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 The world grows worse. The Church can 
 pardon sin, but can not hinder its increase. 
 Every generation inherits from the preceding 
 a burden of evil dispositions, habits and ex- 
 amples, which it lays in its turn still heavier 
 on the shoulders of posterity. Every son 
 has better reason for sighing than his father. 
 "Happy those who died ere beholding the 
 light of day ! who tasted death ere the ex- 
 perience of life ! " * The hosts of Satan assail 
 the Church on every side. From his tower 
 the watchman of Zion looks out over the 
 world, and beholds the billows of history, 
 now lashed fiercely by the demons, roll 
 against the rock upon which Christ has 
 built his temple. With great difficulty the 
 cross-adorned hosts of Europe repel the in- 
 vasion of the Saracens, whose coming has 
 been prefigured by pestilences and portents. 
 The emblem of the Church is an ark tossed 
 about on a stormy sea amid a tempest of 
 
 * "De Contemptu Mundi sive de Miseria Humanae Condi- 
 tionis," a little book written about 1200, by the afterwards 
 Pope Innocent III. 
 
MEDIAEVAL COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. 23 
 
 rain and lightning. History is a spiritual 
 comedy, enacted on a stage of which the 
 broad foreground, like that of the myste- 
 ries, is a theatrum diaholorum; while in the 
 narrow background the Church of G-ocl, like 
 a beleaguered citadel, points its pinnacles 
 above the turmoil towards the gloomy sky, 
 from which its defenders expect Jesus and 
 his angels to come to their relief. 
 
 But before this relief arrives, iniquity shall 
 have reached its height. It is at work already 
 within the sacred precincts of the Church it- 
 self. It is with greater difficulty that God's 
 vicar subdues the inner than the outer ene- 
 mies. On the one hand many a man believes 
 that he has found in his own reason and con- 
 science leading truths, which he arrays, with- 
 out any authority outside of himself, against 
 those commandments which have come from 
 above, and the divine origin of which is con- 
 firmed by the faith of a hundred generations. 
 He places himself in an attitude of opposition 
 to the common faith. Thus originate the her- 
 esies, — those cancers on the boclv of the con- 
 
24 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 gregation which must be cured by the iron, 
 when salves will not restore, and by fire when 
 the iron is ineffective. On the other hand 
 men are so overpowered by their passions 
 that they abandon the God who rebukes them, 
 and become the bondsmen of another god who 
 shows them favor. Pride, fettered by obscure 
 descent, and keen appetite for pleasure chained 
 from gratification by penury and privation, 
 shake their shackles in despair, and finally 
 call the Morning Star of old to their assist- 
 ance. The archfiend promises pleasures with- 
 out stint, and power without limitation. The 
 poor mortal for dread of the pains which af- 
 flict his body is urged on to his destruction. 
 His body, formed from the dust of the accursed 
 earth, and always a centre of sensual desires, 
 is abandoned by God a prey to the assaults 
 of the devil. "Here somebody loses an eye, 
 somebody there a hand; one falls into the fire 
 and is burned to death, one into the water 
 and is drowned; another climbs a ladder and 
 breaks his neck, another again stumbles on 
 the even ground and breaks a leg. All such 
 
MEDIAEVAL COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. 25 
 
 unforeseen accidents, occurring daily, are but 
 the devil's thumps and strokes which he inflicts 
 upon us from sheerest malice.'""'" Still more: 
 the demon is able to take possession so thor- 
 oughly of the human body that he becomes, 
 as it were, its second soul, moves its limbs, 
 utters blasphemies with its tongue at which 
 even their fiendish author can not but tremble. 
 But though the God-fearing man, like pious 
 Job, is benefited by such afflictions, and al- 
 though prayer is a powerful refuge, still there 
 is a continually growing number of those who, 
 driven by cowardly dread of the might of the 
 Prince of Evil, seek their safety in a league 
 with him; so much the more as he lends them 
 a partial control of the elements, and thus a 
 means of employment and of doing harm to 
 others. Thus the dire pestilence of sorcery 
 multiplies its victims; and in the black hours 
 of midnight hundreds of thousands who bear 
 the name of Christian, on mountains and in 
 
 * The words of Luther, who, in addition to his dualistic 
 belief, was a genuine son of this same Middle Age, though 
 the destroyer of its autocratic faith. 
 
2G THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 deserts perform clandestine rites in honor of 
 their Satanic master. Time ripens for the 
 advent of Antichrist, for the Day of Judgment 
 and the final conflagration. 
 
 In the flames of this last day the revolving 
 heavens and the earth are destroyed. Mo- 
 tion, activity, strife, history, — all are at an 
 end. The Empyrean and Hell alone remain, 
 as the antipodal extremes of the former uni- 
 verse. This conflagration is not a universal 
 purifier, annihilating what has no existence 
 in itself.* It only separates forever the gold 
 
 * As such, — as perishable and unreal, are all evil things re- 
 garded by an unknown author in the Middle Ages. In his 
 beautiful opuscule "Deutsche Theologie," he says among other 
 things: "Now some one may ask, 'Since we must love every 
 thing, must we also love sin? ' The answer is, no; for when we 
 say every thing, we only mean every thing that is good. Every 
 thing that exists is good by virtue of its existence. The devil 
 is good in so far as he exists. In this sense, there is nothing 
 evil in existence. But it is a sin to wish, desire or love any thing 
 else than God. Now all things are essentially in God, and more 
 essentially in God than in themselves; therefore are they all 
 good in their real essence." — The little work from which the 
 above is quoted, is the expression of a deep and pious soul, 
 struggling to master the dualism which fettered his age. It is 
 remarkable that Luther was not more strongly influenced by its 
 
MEDIAEVAL COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. 27 
 
 from the dross. The kingdom of the devil 
 continues to exist, and its prey is its own for 
 evermore. But it exists thus only because an 
 eternal existence means an eternal punish- 
 ment for its ruler as well as for his subjects. 
 From the new heavens and the new earth 
 which the fiat of God has created to be the 
 dwelling-place of those who have escaped de- 
 struction, these ransomed spirits perceive the 
 gnashing of teeth and lamentation of their 
 doomed brethren, and look down upon their 
 tortures and misery, not with compassion but 
 with joy, because they recognize in their pun- 
 ishment the vindication of divine justice; not 
 with pain but delight, because the sight of 
 their wretchedness doubles their own felicity. 
 From the depths of that gulf of misery ascend 
 without ceasing, to the Empyrean, cries of de- 
 spair, blasphemies of defiance, and curses of 
 rage, yet do they not disturb the hymns which 
 saints and angels sing ever around the throne 
 
 spirit, although he confesses that "Next to the Bible and St. 
 Augustine I have found no book from which I have learned 
 more." 
 
28 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 of God and of the Lamb; they only intensify 
 the solemnity of the worship.* 
 
 Such in its chief features was the cosmic 
 philosophy of the Middle Ages; not abstractly 
 considered, but such as existed in reality dur- 
 ing many centuries among Christian people, 
 guiding their thoughts, imagination and feel- 
 ings, and governing their actions. Remains 
 of it are still apparent in the systems of ex- 
 isting sects, though incompatible with the 
 new philosophy which the human mind has 
 
 * See the work "Summa Theologica" (supplementum ad ter- 
 tiam partem, quasst. 94) by the most prominent and most in- 
 fluential among the theologians of the Middle Ages, Thomas 
 Aquinas. It is there said: "Ut beatitudo sanctorum eis ma- 
 gis complaceat et de ea uberiores gratias Deo agant, datur eis 
 ut poenam impiorum perfecte videant . . Beati, qui erunt 
 in gloria, nullam compassionem ad damnatos habebunt. . . 
 Sancti de poenis impiorum gaudebunt, considerando in eis di- 
 vinae justitiae ordinem et suam liberationem de qua gaudebunt." 
 — With this may be compared the following execrable effusion 
 of another theologian: "Beati coalites non tantum non cogna- 
 torum sed nee parentum sempiternis suppliciis ad ullam miser- 
 ationem flectentur. Imo vero laetabuntur justi, cum viderint 
 vindictam; manus lavabunt in sanguine peccatorum." 
 
ITS HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT. 29 
 
 been laboring to unfold. Ever since the in- 
 tellect of Christendom began to free itself in 
 the sixteenth century from faith by author- 
 ity, the influence of the old views upon the 
 various forms which life takes on, has been 
 gradually declining. 
 
 Many of those characteristics which so 
 strangely contrast the state of society in the 
 Middle Ages with the preceding Hellenic and 
 the subsequent modern European civiliza- 
 tions, have their origin in different theories 
 of the universe. It is not mere chance that 
 we encounter, on the one hand, in the his- 
 tory of Greece, so many harmonious forms 
 with repose and tranquil joy depicted in 
 every lineament of their countenance, and 
 on the other, in that of the Middle Ages, so 
 many beings buried in deepest gloom or ex- 
 alted in frenzied rapture, dripping with blood 
 from self-inflicted wounds, or glowing with 
 the fever of mystic emotion — not a mere 
 chance that the former age loves those se- 
 rene forms and immortalizes them in its he- 
 roic galleries, while the latter worships its 
 
30 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 eccentric figures and describes them in its 
 legends as saintly models. It is not a mere 
 accident that the art of Greece mirrors a 
 beautiful humanity, while that of the Middle 
 Ages loves to dwell upon monstrosities and 
 throws itself between the extremes of awful 
 earnestness and wild burlesque; not an acci- 
 dent only that the science of the Greek is 
 rational — that he discovers the categories in 
 Logic, and rears a most perfect structure of 
 rigid demonstration in his Geometry, while 
 the science of the Middle Ages on the con- 
 trary is magic, — is a doctrine of correspond- 
 encies, Astrology, Alchemy, and Sorcery. 
 
 To the Greek the universe was a harmo- 
 nious unity. The law of reason, veiled under 
 the name of fate, ruled the gods themselves. 
 The variegated events of the myth lay far 
 away in the distance; they did not even warp 
 the imagination of the poet, when he occu- 
 pied himself with them; still less the faith of 
 the multitude, and least of all the investi- 
 gations of the thinker. The uninterrupted 
 sequence of events invited to contemplation, 
 
ITS HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT. 31 
 
 which could be indulged in the more readily, 
 as no one pretended to have received as a 
 gift a complete system of revealed truth, and 
 the more freely, as no authority forced the 
 individual to choose between such a system 
 and perdition. In general no doubt was en- 
 tertained concerning the ability of Reason to 
 penetrate to the inner essence of things, since 
 no knowledge of the fall of man, which an- 
 nihilated this ability, had reached the Greeks. 
 In regard to knowledge the Greek conse- 
 quently built on evidence and inner author- 
 ity. The same was the case in regard to 
 morality. They were convinced that those 
 impulses which promoted the happiness of 
 domestic life, were good ; and that those 
 which did not counteract it were at least 
 justified; and thus they enjoyed with moder- 
 ation the gifts of nature, without suspicion 
 that the bountiful giver was accursed. The 
 ideal of wisdom which they had framed, was 
 based on their inner experience, whether it 
 had the joyous features of Epicurus, the se- 
 verer lineaments of Zeno, or the mild and 
 
32 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 resigned expression of Epictetus; and when 
 they exerted themselves to realize it in their 
 lives, they always proceeded upon the suppo- 
 sition that this would be possible by a daily 
 strengthening of the will. The exertion put 
 forth by the Greeks to attain to purity and 
 virtue was, as it were, a system of gymnas- 
 tics for developing the muscles of the brain. 
 The same power and self-confidence were dis- 
 played in these endeavors as in the palaestra. 
 Sighs and anguish were strangers to this kind 
 of reformatory effort. Yet was it not alto- 
 gether fruitless. The old adage that God 
 helps those who help themselves can be here 
 applied. That it developed great, powerful, 
 and noble natures was so undeniable that 
 even one of the Christian fathers, upon con- 
 sidering their achievements, began to doubt 
 if his way of attaining perfection was really 
 the only one, until he succeeded in convinc- 
 ing himself that " The virtues of the Gentiles 
 are shining vices." The harmonious person- 
 ality of the Greek and the rationality of Gre- 
 cian science depended on the unity, the har- 
 
ITS HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT. 33 
 
 mony of their cosmic views — upon this, that 
 they conceived of the whole as a unity in its 
 diversity, not as an irreconcilable disunion 
 of two absolutely antagonistic principles. 
 
 If, on the contrary, the highest ruling pow- 
 er in nature is an arbitrary divine caprice, if 
 the world which lies open before mankind is 
 ruled by another's purely fortuitous decrees, 
 themselves interfered with continually by hos- 
 tile influences from an infernal kingdom; if, 
 moreover, this struggle rages not merely in 
 the external world, but also in the very core 
 of human nature, vitiating her reason, feel- 
 ings and will, so to employ them without 
 her agency as means to her exaltation or 
 perdition, then is there indeed no causality 
 to be sought for, and consequently no field 
 anywhere for scientific investigation. Were 
 there even any such thing as science, it would 
 lie far beyond the powers of man, since reason, 
 a mere plaything for demoniac powers, can 
 not be trusted. Neither has his personality 
 any longer its centre of gravity within itself. 
 Then is man in excessive need of such an in- 
 
 3 
 

 34 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 stitution of deliverance as the Church, which 
 teaches him what the divine authority has 
 arbitrarily decided to be good or evil; while 
 the supernatural means of grace, the sacra- 
 ments, afford him power of resisting evil, and 
 absolve him from his failings. In this way ex- 
 ternal authority supplants the inner, which is 
 torn up by the roots. That ideal of human 
 perfection which is possible under such con- 
 ditions, and which actually arises because the 
 native activity of the mind constantly en- 
 deavors to bring all accepted notions into 
 union, places itself on the doctrine of author- 
 ity as its foundation, and accepts its super- 
 natural character. That the ideal of the Mid- 
 dle Ages is ascetic and its science magical, is 
 directly consequent upon its dualistic concep- 
 tion of the universe and of its peculiar nature. 
 The dualism of the Middle Ages was de- 
 rived from Persia. It is the essential idea 
 of the Zoroastrian doctrine, which finally, 
 after a long struggle against the unitarian 
 notions of the Greeks, penetrates the Occi- 
 dent and completely conquers it. This vie- 
 
. ITS HISTORIC A I DEVELOPMENT. 35 
 
 torious combat of the Orient against Europe 
 is the sum of history between Cyrus and 
 Constantine. The external events which fill 
 those centuries obtain their true significance 
 when within and behind them one perceives 
 the struggle between the two conflicting sys- 
 tems of ideas. Like concealed chess-play- 
 ers they move their unconscious champions 
 against each other on the board of history. 
 When Cyrus sends home the Jewish pris- 
 oners from the rivers of Babylon to the 
 mountains of Jerusalem, he gains for dual- 
 ism that important flank-position on the Med- 
 iterranean the significance of which is shown 
 centuries after in the progress of the battle. 
 The "Adversary" (Satan) who sometimes 
 appears' in the most recent portions of the 
 Old Testament, written under Persian influ- 
 ence, and plays a continually widening role 
 in the Rabbinical literature, is the Judaized 
 Ahriman; the demoniacs who in the time of 
 Christ abounded in Palestine testify that the 
 demon-belief of Persian dualism had pene- 
 trated into the imagination and feeling of the 
 
36 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 Jews, and there borne fruit. By the side of 
 this peaceful conquest the great war-drama 
 between Greece and Persia is enacted. Al- 
 though this is not recognizedly a religious 
 war, it is nevertheless Ormuzd and Ahriman 
 who are repelled at Marathon, Salamis and 
 Platsea, it is the Grecian unitarianism which 
 is saved in these battles to develop itself, for 
 a season undisturbed, into a radiant and beau- 
 tiful culture. As has been shown already, 
 magic, and belief upon authority, are the nec- 
 essary consequences of a dualistic religion; 
 the restriction and annihilation of free per- 
 sonality are equally necessary consequences 
 of belief by authority. Can any one regard- 
 ing the conflict which raged on the field of 
 Marathon, fail to recognize the clash of two 
 spiritual opposites, two different systems of 
 ideas, when he sees the bands of Greeks, 
 drawn from their agorai (places for political 
 discussion) and gymnasiums, advance cheer- 
 fully and garlanded, but without depreciating 
 the danger, to meet the innumerable hosts of 
 the Orient driven on by the scourge of their 
 
ITS HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT 37 
 
 leaders ? On the one side, a fully developed 
 free personality, which has its origin in a har- 
 monious conception of nature, on the other, 
 blind submission to external force. On the 
 one side, liberty, on the other, despotism. 
 One may add by the help of a logical 
 conclusion, though this may seem more re- 
 moved, — on the one side rationality, on the 
 other magic. 
 
 Strengthened thus by victory Europe goes 
 to seek the enemy in his own country. Alex- 
 ander conquers Asia. But the new Achilles 
 is fettered in the chains of his own slave. 
 For while Greek culture is spreading over 
 the surface of the conquered countries, the 
 Oriental spirit advances beneath it in a con- 
 trary direction. The waves of the two ideal 
 currents are partly mingled. In the libraries 
 of Alexandria and Pergamus the literatures 
 of the Orient and of the Occident flow to- 
 gether; in their halls meet the sages of the 
 East and West ; in their doctrinal systems 
 Zoroaster and Plato, fancy and speculation, 
 maoic and rationalism are blended in the 
 
38 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 most extraordinary way. The victory of 
 Alexander was that of the warrior, and not 
 that of sober Aristotle's pupil. The Judaico- 
 Alexandrian philosophy blooms, and gnosti- 
 cism, — that monstrous bastard of specifically 
 different cosmical systems, is already begot- 
 ten, when Christianity springs up in Palestine, 
 and unites itself with the Jewish dualism de- 
 rived from Zoroaster, and thus proceeds to 
 conquer the world by the weapons of belief. 
 In the mean time Rome has extended and 
 established its empire. The nationalities in- 
 cluded in it have been mingled together ; 
 their various gods have been carried into the 
 same Pantheon ; and their ideas have been 
 brought face to face. The universal empire, 
 to maintain its existence, has been forced to 
 centralize itself into a despotism of the Orien- 
 tal type, the free forms of state have per- 
 ished, philosophical skepticism and eudemon- 
 ism have abolished among the cultured classes 
 the inherited notions of religion. All this, 
 with its accompaniments of moral depravity 
 and material necessity, have prepared the soil 
 
ITS HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT. 39 
 
 of the Occident for receiving the seed of the 
 new religion. Emptiness and misery make 
 the difference between ideality and reality, 
 between good and evil, all the more percepti- 
 ble even to unitarian nations. Dualism thus 
 prepared for in the realms of thought and 
 feeling, spreads in Christian form with ir- 
 resistible force over the Roman provinces. 
 Innumerable masses of the poor and op- 
 pressed devote themselves to the ' ' philoso- 
 phy of the Barbarians and the Orient ' ; (as 
 a Greek thinker called Christianity) because 
 they recognize in it their own experience of 
 life, and have full assurance in their hope 
 of relief. 
 
 The Hellenico-Roman paganism offers a 
 fruitless' resistance. The persecutions on the 
 part of the state only hasten the spread of 
 Christianity. What the state can not do, 
 perhaps the Hellenic culture and philosophy 
 may do. These, once mutually hostile, are 
 reconciled in the face of common clanger. 
 The dying lamp of antiquity flares and 
 brightens when pure hearts and profound 
 
40 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 minds, otherwise despising the myths as su- 
 perstition, now grasp them as symbols of 
 higher truths. Philosophy goes forth, in the 
 form of Neoplatonism. 
 
 But Neoplatonism has itself apostatized 
 from the rational and unitarian. Plotinus 
 and Ammonius Saccas try in vain to restore 
 it. It only unwittingly helps its adversary, 
 especially when, to gain the masses, it con- 
 sents to compete with him in miracles. Jam- 
 blichus and others practice secret arts in 
 order to outrival the Christian magi, and 
 they glorify Pythagoras and Appollonius of 
 Tyana as fit to rank with Jesus of Nazareth 
 in miraculous gifts. By this they only con- 
 tribute to the spread of magic and the prin- 
 ciples of dualism. The current of Oriental 
 notions proceeds all the more rapidly on its 
 course of triumph. 
 
 Christian dualism already feels itself strong 
 enough to battle not only against its declared 
 enemies, but also those Occidental elements of 
 culture which in its beginnings it had received 
 into its bosom and which had procured its 
 
ITS HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT. 41 
 
 entrance among the more intelligent classes. 
 It feels instinctively that even the school 
 of thought which has sprung up within the 
 Church is far too unitarian and rationalistic 
 to be tolerated in the long run. Such men 
 as Clemens of Alexandria and Origen, who 
 are struck by what is external and imperish- 
 able in Christianity, and know how to sepa- 
 rate this from its dualistic form, fight a tragi- 
 cal battle for the union of belief and thought. 
 Admitting that Christ is all in all, the imme- 
 diate power and wisdom of God, they never- 
 theless wish to save the Hellenic philosophy 
 from the destruction which a fanaticism, rev- 
 elling in the certainty and all-sufficiency of 
 revelation, directs against every expression 
 of an occidental culture, whether in national 
 life, or art, or science. They point out that 
 philosophy, if it can do nothing else that is 
 good, can furnish rational weapons against 
 those who assail faith, and that it can and 
 ought to be the "real wall of defence about 
 the vineyard." Their argument is without 
 effect. Philosophy is of the devil: yea, every- 
 
42 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 thing true and good in life and doctrine which 
 heathendom has possessed, is declared by one 
 of the fathers to be the imposture of Satan 
 {ingenia diaboli qucedam de divinis affectandis)) 
 and faith is so far independent of thought 
 that it is better to say "I believe because 
 it is improbable, absurd, impossible." * In 
 vain the dying Clemens exclaims- "Even if 
 philosophy were of the devil, Satan could 
 deceive men only in the garb of an angel 
 of light: he must allure men by the appear- 
 ance of truth, by the intermixture of truth 
 and falsehood; we ought therefore to seek 
 and recognize the truth from whatever source 
 it come. . . And even this gift to the pa- 
 gans can have been theirs only by the will 
 of God, and must consequently be included 
 in the divine plan of educating humanity. 
 . . If sin and disorder are attributable to 
 the devil, how absurd to make him the au- 
 thor and giver of so good a thing as phi- 
 losophy ! . . . . God gave the Law to 
 the Jews, and philosophy to the Gentiles, 
 
 * Tertullian. 
 
ITS HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT. 43 
 
 only to prepare for the coming of Christ." 
 Such are the words that ring out the last 
 dying echo of Hellenic culture and human- 
 ity! It is not a mere accident that with 
 philosophy Clemens and Origen also sought 
 to save the unitarian principles in so far as 
 to reject the doctrine of eternal punishment 
 in hell, and maintain that the devil will fi- 
 nally become good, and God be all in all. 
 But such a view could not command atten- 
 tion at a time when Christianity, only be- 
 cause it was not sharply and consistently du- 
 alistic, felt itself endangered by that wholly 
 consistent and thorough-going dualism which 
 under the name of Manicheism once more 
 advanced against Europe from the Persian 
 border. Although Manicheism seemed to in- 
 cur defeat, nevertheless one of its former 
 adherents, Augustine, infused its spirit into 
 the Church. During the century which fol- 
 lowed him the Germanic migration destroyed, 
 along with the last schools, the last vestiges 
 of Graaco - Romaic culture. The Barbarians 
 were persuaded to receive baptism, often by 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 means of pomp and deceit; their divinities, 
 as formerly the denizens of Olympus, were 
 degraded to evil demons. Every thing an- 
 tecedent to their union with the Church or 
 disconnected with it, — the old experiences 
 and traditions of these converted nations, — ■ 
 all was condemned and referred to the world 
 of evil. The dominion of Oriental dualism 
 in Europe was absolutely established, and 
 the long night of the Dark Ages had set in. 
 Six centuries separate Proclus, the last Neo- 
 platonican of any note, and Augustine the 
 last of the Fathers educated in philosophy, 
 from Anselm the founder of scholasticism ! 
 Between them lies an expanse in which 
 Gregory the Great and Scotus Erigena are 
 almost the only stars, and these by no means 
 of the first magnitude. "There are deserts 
 in time, as well as space," says Bacon. 
 
 ' When again a feeble attempt at scientific 
 activity was possible, the monkish scholar 
 was happy enough to possess a few macu- 
 lated leaves of Aristotle, obtained, but not 
 directly, from the Arabs. Upon these leaves 
 
 
ITS HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT. 45 
 
 lie read with amazement and admiration the 
 method for a logical investigation. It was, 
 for the rest, Hermes Trismegistus, Dionysius 
 Areopagita (the translation of Scotus Eri- 
 gena), and other such mystical works from 
 unknown hands, with here and there touches 
 of Neoplatonism which had been inserted by 
 the dreamy scholiast when in need of ma- 
 terial for rounding out the cosmology, the 
 principles of which he had found in the dog- 
 mas of the Church. 
 
 As a matter of course the Dark Ages could 
 not perceive, still less admit, the intimate re- 
 lation existing between its cosmic views and 
 those of Zoroaster; but still a dim suspicion 
 of it can be detected. The learned men of 
 the Middle Ages ascribed to Zoroaster the 
 founding of the magical sciences. Sprenger 
 (author of Malleus Malificarum, of which fa- 
 tal work hereafter), Remigius, Jean Boclin, 
 Delrio, and several other jurists and theolo- 
 gians, who have acquired a sad notoriety as 
 judges of witch-trials, in their writings as- 
 cribe the origin of witchcraft to Zoroaster. 
 
46 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 The dualistic notion was not modified after 
 entering Christianity, but intensified. The 
 religion of Zoroaster, which presupposes a 
 good first principle,* allows the evil which 
 has in time arisen, in the course of time to 
 disappear ; and it ends with the doctrine 
 which shines out faintly even in the New 
 Testament, of the final "restoration of all 
 things" (<xTtoHa.T&6T<x.6\s Ttavraov^ and in conse- 
 quence reduces evil to something merely phe- 
 nomenal. In the doctrines of the Church, 
 however, as they were established through 
 the influence of Augustine, the Manicheian, 
 evil, though arisen in time, is made eternal. 
 This difference is of great practical signifi- 
 cance and explains why dualism did not bear 
 the same terrible fruits in its home in the 
 Orient as in the Occident. The awful sepa- 
 ration and contrast with which the divina 
 comedia of the Middle Ages ends, — the wails 
 and curses that arise from hell to intensify the 
 
 * This lias been denied in so far as the original teachings 
 of Zoroaster are concerned, but is confirmed by a passage in 
 Aristotle (Metaphys., I., xiv., c. 4). 
 
ITS HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT. 47 
 
 bliss of the redeemed, — form a conception so 
 revolting that it could not be incorporated 
 with thought and feeling without rendering 
 them savage. Compassion, benevolence, love, 
 • — those qualities through which man feels a 
 kinship with the divine, lose their significance 
 and are despoiled of their eternal seal, when 
 they are found no longer in his Maker ex- 
 cept as limited or rather suspended by the 
 action of another quality which the pious man 
 will force himself to call justice, but which 
 an irrepressible voice from the innermost re- 
 cesses of his soul calls cruelty. To this must 
 be added a further important consideration. 
 The servant of Ormuzd is no more the prop- 
 erty of the devil than the earth he treads 
 upon. To be sure he is surrounded on every 
 side by the treachery of Ahriman and all the 
 demons, but this only because he is called 
 and already endowed with power to be the 
 champion of the Good upon the earth. It is 
 as such that he is placed in the tumult of the 
 battle. The power for good once imparted to 
 him, and constantly renewed through prayer, 
 
48 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 is withal also his own; he may use it with- 
 out losing himself in the perplexing ques- 
 tion where liberty ceases and grace begins. 
 Every one adhering to the doctrine of light 
 stands on his own feet. This is true of every 
 servant of Ormuzd; Zoroaster has made in 
 this respect no distinction between priest and 
 layman. Even belief upon authority, in it- 
 self an encroachment upon free personality, 
 preserves for it in this form of religion a free 
 and inviolable arena. 
 
 In the Church of the Middle Ages the case 
 is different, and it cannot be presented better 
 than in the following words of the Neo-Lu- 
 theran Yilmar, when he would preserve ab- 
 solutely to the clergy "the power to keep 
 the congregation together by the word, the 
 sacraments and ecclesiastical authority, the 
 power to cleave the head of sin with a single 
 word, the power to descend into a soul in 
 which the enemy has spread the gloom of 
 insanity and force the defiant knees of the 
 maniac to bend and his frenzied fists to fold 
 in prayer, yea, the power [here we have the 
 
ITS HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT. 49 
 
 climax, which is rather tame after the fore- 
 going] to descend into a soul in which the 
 ancient enemy has established his abode, and 
 there fight the insolent giant from the realms 
 of darkness face to face and eye to eye. All 
 this " — continues Yilmar, himself not unlike 
 a frantic conjurer wishing to summon the 
 ghost of the Dark Ages from its grave — " all 
 this is not in the power of the congregation 
 nor of the ministry, who are not endowed 
 with the requisite authority, commission, 
 mandate and power. The congregation (i. e., 
 the laymen) is not able to look into the furi- 
 ous eyes of the devil; for what is prophesied 
 of the last days, that even the elect, were 
 it possible, should be seduced, applies with 
 greater force to the especial apparition of Sa- 
 tan in this world : before it the congregation 
 is scattered like flakes of snow, not seduced 
 but terrified to death. Only we (the clergy) 
 are unterrified and fearless ; for he who has 
 rejected the prince of this world has placed 
 us before the awful serpent-eye of the arch- 
 fiend, before his blasphemous and scornful 
 
50 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 mouth, before his infernally distorted face."* 
 These words from the pen of a fanatical du- 
 alist of our own time well represent, as in- 
 dicated above, the commonly received views 
 of the Middle Ages; and it is not therefore to 
 be wondered at that the mediaeval genera- 
 tions, surrendering personality, threw them- 
 selves precipitately, in order to be saved, into 
 the arms of the magical institution of deliver- 
 ance. The phenomena which are delineated 
 in the following pages will not seem so ar- 
 bitrary and strange after this introductory 
 glance at the middle-age philosophy, as they 
 might otherwise at first sight. Even they are 
 a product of an inner necessity. Were it pos- 
 sible — and deplorable attempts are not want- 
 ing — to revive in the thoughts, feelings and 
 imagination of humanity the dogmas of medi- 
 aeval times, we should then witness a partial 
 re-enactment of their terrible scenes. To de- 
 pict them has not only a purely historic inter- 
 est, but a cautionary and practical as well. 
 
 * A. F. Ch. Vilmar: "Theologie der Tliatsachen wider die 
 Theologie der Rhetorik" (Marburg, 1857). 
 
II. 
 
 THE MAGIC OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 Magic is the harbinger of Science. In the 
 history of human development, the dim per- 
 ception precedes the clear, and the dominion 
 of imagination that of reason. Before the lat- 
 ter could take upon itself the laborious task 
 of connecting together by its own laws the 
 facts of external and internal experience, — ■ 
 before there was any philosophy or natural 
 science, imagination was bestirring itself in 
 the creation of magic. 
 
 Like science, magic in its original form is 
 based upon the principle that all things ex- 
 isting are concatenated. Science searches 
 for the links of union both deductively and 
 inductively; magic, seeking its support in 
 the external resemblances between existing 
 
52 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 things,* and in a vague assurance of the 
 power of the will and of words, establishes 
 this connection freely by means of arbitra- 
 ry associations between incongruous objects. 
 Man engaged in a struggle for physical exist- 
 ence, aims in it less at theoretical knowing 
 than at practical being able. The knowledge 
 of mysteries will furnish means of becoming 
 acceptable to his God, inaccessible to injurious 
 influences, and master of his present and fu- 
 ture existence and destiny. 
 
 The magical usages which exist among 
 every people, present an almost infinite va- 
 riety of forms. In the end, however, they 
 can all be reduced to a single type. 
 
 Daily experience has taught that there ex- 
 ists between every cause and its effect a cer- 
 tain proportionate amount of force. Now 
 since the effect aimed at in resorting to mag- 
 ic is of an extraordinary nature, the means 
 which the magical art prescribes must possess 
 
 * Thus, for instance, the red lustre of copper was supposed to 
 indicate that it was connected with Mars, which shines with a 
 reddish light. 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE CHURCH. 53 
 
 extraordinary efficacy, such as reason can pre- 
 dict for it neither a priori nor by inductive 
 reasoning. Furthermore, experience teaches 
 us that will, as a mere inert desire, not yet 
 expressed in action, does not attain its goal. 
 Magical power therefore can not be sought 
 for in the mere will as such, but action, that 
 working of the senses which the will employs 
 as a means, in which it reveals itself, must be 
 added, whether the force of this sense-means, 
 as the original magic supposes, depends on 
 its mystical but necessary connection with its 
 corresponding object in a higher sphere (for 
 example, the connection between the metals 
 and the planets), or as in the Church-magic, 
 on an arbitrary decision of God, ordaining 
 that a given means, employed as prescribed 
 by him, shall produce an effect inconceivable 
 by reason. In all employment of magic en- 
 ter consequently, first, the subjective spir- 
 itual factor, — the will (in the language of 
 the Church, faith); secondly, the sensuous 
 means, — the fetich, the amulet, the holy wa- 
 ter, the host, the formula of exorcism, the 
 
54 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 ceremony, etc.; and thirdly, the incompre- 
 hensible ("supernatural") power which this 
 means, appropriated by the will (or faith), 
 possesses in the magical act. 
 
 A belief in magic is found among all na- 
 tions. With those of unitarian views it was 
 destined to be forced more and more into the 
 background by the growth of speculation and 
 natural science. With them there was also 
 but one form of magic, although those in 
 possession of its secret were considered able 
 to exercise it for a useful or an injurious pur- 
 pose alike. Only among nations holding du- 
 alistic views do we meet with magic in two 
 forms: with the priests a ivhite and a black, — 
 the former as the good gift of Ormuzd, the 
 latter as the evil gift of Ahriman; with the 
 Christians of the Middle Ages a celestial magic 
 and a diabolical, — the former a privilege of 
 the Church and conferred by God as a weap- 
 on to aid in the conquest of Satan; the latter 
 an infernal art to further unbelief and wick- 
 edness. Under a unitarian theory magic is 
 only a preparation for natural philosophy and 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE CHURCH 55 
 
 gradually gives place to it, until it is confined 
 to the lowest classes as a relic of a past stage 
 of development. The dualistic religious sys- 
 tems, on the contrary, blend in an intimate 
 union with magic, give to it the same uni- 
 versally and eternally valid power which they 
 ascribe to themselves, and place it on their 
 own throne in the form of a divine and sacra- 
 mental secret. Only thus can faith in magic 
 stamp whole ages and periods of culture with 
 its peculiar seal; only thus — after its separa- 
 tion into celestial and diabolical, and in that 
 causal relation to the temporal or eternal 
 weal or woe of man in which it is placed — ■ 
 does it become possessed of an absolute sov- 
 ereignty over the imagination and emotions of 
 a people. 
 
 Our consideration of the middle-age magic 
 may commence with a description of the ce- 
 lestial or privileged magic, that is to say, that 
 of the Church; in order that we may proceed 
 in natural order to the ill-reputed magic of 
 the learned (astrology, alchemy, sorcery), and 
 the persecuted -popular magic (in which the 
 
56 THE MAGIC OE THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 Church saw the really diabolical form); and 
 end with an account of the terrible catastro- 
 phe which was caused by the contest which 
 raged between them. 
 
 It is not the fault of the writer if the 
 reader finds in the magic of the Church a 
 caricature of what is holy, in which the comi- 
 cal element is overbalanced by the repulsive. 
 The more objective the representation is to 
 be made, the more unpleasant its features be- 
 come. We will, then, be brief. 
 
 Like a thoughtful mother the Church cher- 
 ishes and cares for man, and surrounds him 
 from the cradle to the grave with its safe- 
 guards of magic. Shortly after the birth of 
 a child the priest must be ready to sprinkle 
 it with holy water, which by prayer and con- 
 juration has been purified from the pollution 
 of the demons inhabiting even this element. 
 For the feeble being begotten in sin and by 
 nature Lucifer's, property, without the grace 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE CHURCH. 57 
 
 of baptism, would be eternally lost to heaven, 
 and eternally doomed to the torments of 
 hell. 1 
 
 Therefore more than one conscientious ser- 
 vant of the Church essayed to devise some 
 means by which the saving water might be 
 brought in contact with the child before it 
 saw the light. Still this precautionary meas- 
 ure never became officially adopted. The ef- 
 ficacy of the baptismal water exceeds that 
 of the pool Bethesda, which removed only 
 bodily infirmities. Baptism saves millions of 
 souls from hell. Foreseeing this the devil, 
 filled with evil devices, had determined, al- 
 ready before the rise of Christianity, to de- 
 base and scorn this sacrament by making, in 
 anticipation, a copy of it in the Mithras mys- 
 
 1 "Non baptisatis parvulis nemo promittat inter damnation- 
 em regnumque ccelorura quietis vel felicitatis cujuslibet atque 
 ubilibet quasi medium locum; hoc enim eis etiam haeresis Pe- 
 lagiana promisit" (Augustinus: Da Anima et Ejus Origine, 1. I., 
 c. rx). In one of bis letters Augustine declares that even if the 
 parents hurry to the priest, and he likewise hasten to baptize the 
 child, but find it dead before it has obtained the sacrament, it is 
 nevertheless then doomed to be eternally tormented with the 
 damned, and to blaspheme the name of God. 
 
58 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 teries instituted by him, which insolently im- 
 itate in other respects the mysteries of the 
 Church. 
 
 In baptism other means, consecrated by 
 the priest, co-operate with the water: viz., 
 the oil, the spittle (which the priest after 
 baptism lets fall upon the child, and the 
 efficacy of which is derived from Mark 
 vii. 33), the salt, the milk and the honey. 2 
 Besides, there are the sign of the cross 
 and the conjuration, which drive the tempt- 
 er out of the child and prepare room for 
 the Holy Ghost. With these magic cere- 
 monies the child is received into the Church 
 and from thenceforth becomes a sharer in 
 the protection which it gives against the 
 evil. 
 
 Baptismal, or holy water, when drunk by 
 the sick and infirm, heals and strengthens; 
 if sprinkled upon the fields promotes fer- 
 tility, or given to the domestic animals, 
 affords them protection against witchcraft. 
 
 2 All these are found, in connection with baptism, in heathen 
 mysteries. 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE CHURCH. 59 
 
 As baptism is the first saving and sanc- 
 tifying sacrament offered to man, so the 
 miction with holy oil which is administered 
 to the dying, is the last. Between them 
 the eucharist is a perennial source of power 
 and sanctification, — the eucharist in which 
 "Bread and wine, placed upon the altar, 
 after performed consecration, are G-od's true 
 flesh and blood, which flesh perceptibly to 
 the senses (sensualiter) is touched by the 
 hands of the priest and masticated by the 
 teeth of the believer.' 7 3 When the priest 
 has pronounced the formula of transforma- 
 tion, he elevates the host, 4 now no longer 
 bread but the body of Christ, the congrega- 
 tion kneels and the ringing of bells proclaims 
 to the neighborhood that the greatest of all 
 the works of magic is accomplished. Eaten 
 by the faithful, the flesh of Christ enters into 
 their own flesh and blood and wonderfully 
 
 3 Extract from the formula given at the council of Eome, 
 A. d. 1059, to Berengar of Tours, to which he was forced to 
 swear under penalty of death. 
 
 4 The wafer substituted in the twelfth century for bread was 
 called the host. 
 
60 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 strengthens both soul and body. 5 Heretics 
 in Arras who believed that righteousness was 
 necessary to salvation and doubted the doc- 
 trine of transubstantiation, were converted 
 as soon as Bishop Gerhard told them that, 
 in the time of Gregory the Great, the con- 
 
 5 The discovery made in our days by the Danish theologian 
 Martensens that the food obtained in the Supper of our Lord 
 is not for the soul only, but also for the body, — for the nour- 
 ishment of our ascension-body, is not really new; the pagan 
 initiated into the Mithras mysteries was taught that the con- 
 secrated bread and wine, being assimilated into his flesh and 
 blood, gave immortality to his corporeal being. Like presup- 
 positions produce in different times like ideas. 
 
 An important question in the Middle Ages and one which 
 had been already argued with great heat from the time of Pe- 
 trus Lombardus until the seventeenth century, is propounded 
 as follows: Has a rat which has eaten of the host thereby par- 
 taken of Christ's body? In connection with this it was fur- 
 ther asked: How is a rat which has eaten of Christ's body to 
 be treated, — ought it to be killed or honored? Ought the 
 sacrament to be venerated even in the stomach of the rat? 
 If some of the consecrated bread is found in the stomach of 
 a rat, is it a duty to eat it? What must be done if immedi- 
 ately after partaking of the sacrament one is attacked by vomit- 
 ing? When a rat can eat the host, can not the devil also do 
 it? — One of the last products of these important investigations 
 is a book published in Tubingen in 1593, entitled: "Mus ex- 
 enteratus, hoc est tractatus valde magistralis super qucestione qua- 
 dam theologica splnosa et multum subtili," etc. 
 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE CHURCH. Gl 
 
 secrated bread had taken, before a doubting 
 woman, the shape of Christ's bleeding finger. 
 A pious hermit who began to be afflicted by 
 the same doubt, regained his faith when at 
 the Communion he saw an angel apply the 
 knife to an infant Jesus, at the very moment 
 the priest broke the bread. There is much 
 in the legends and chronicles about Jews 
 who having secretly procured the host, and, 
 to be revenged upon Christ, proceeding to 
 pierce it with a knife, saw the blood stream 
 forth in abundance ; sometimes, indeed, a 
 beautiful bleeding boy suddenly revealing 
 himself. Such stories being freely circulated, 
 led to severe persecutions (as in Namur, 
 1320). 6 
 
 6 During the period of political reaction in 1815, when Schle- 
 gel and de Maistre praised the Middle Ages as man's era of 
 bliss, and Gorres sought to restore to credence during the 
 "state period of enlightenment" all the forgotten ghost and 
 vampire stories, the clergy of Brussels were celebrating with 
 processions and other solemnities the anniversary of this per- 
 secution of the Jews in Namur. 
 
 At the synod in a. d. 1099 a proclamation was issued forbid- 
 ding priests to enter into any servile relations with laymen, be- 
 cause it were shameful if the most holy hands which prepared 
 
62 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 If the eucharist is a partaking of food 
 which strengthens the faithful in their strug- 
 gle against sin, the sign of the cross is to be 
 considered as his sword, and the sacred amulet 
 as his armor. The cross is the sign in which 
 the Christian shall conquer. [" In hoc signo 
 vinces. ,r j With it he must commence every 
 act; with it he repels every attack of the 
 demons. "He who wishes to be convinced 
 concerning this," says St. Athanasius, "needs 
 only to make the sign of the cross, which 
 has become so ridiculous to the pagans, be- 
 fore the mocking delusions of the demons, 
 the deceits of the oracles and the magi; and 
 immediately he shall see the devil flee, the 
 oracles confounded and all magic and sorcery 
 revenged." The amulets employed by the 
 Church are various: medals bearing the im- 
 age of Mary, consecrated images, especially 
 
 the flesh and blood of Almighty God should serve the uncon- 
 secrated laity. The famous orator Bourdaloue requested that 
 greater homage should be paid to the priest than to the holy 
 Virgin, because God had been incarnated in her bosom only 
 once, but was in the hands of the priest daily, as often as the 
 mass was read. 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE CHURCH. 63 
 
 the so-called lambs of God 7 (agnus Dei), the 
 manufacture and sale of which a papal bull 
 of 1471 reserves for the head of the Roman 
 Church. If these bring the clergy immense 
 sums of money, they also possess great 
 
 » The oldest Christian art in which the dying spirit of antiq- 
 uity yet reveals itself, represented Jesus as a shepherd youth 
 carrying a lamb upon his bosom. Many a one could only turn 
 away sadly from the beaming world of Olympus to the new 
 Christian ideal, and when they must needs so do, they would 
 fain transfer to the new "puer redemptor" the mild beauty 
 of the former youthful mediator, Dionysus Zagreus. In the 
 hymns, still preserved to us, of Synesius, who combined in 
 one person the bishop and the Greek who still longs for wis- 
 dom and beauty (doubtless known to many of our readers by 
 Kingsley's novel of Hypatia), this sadness is in wonderful har- 
 mony with Christian devotion. With the ruin of the antique 
 world, this longing as well as the capability of satisfying it 
 ceased. The material symbol obtained thereafter a more prom- 
 inent place. If the Phoenicians and Canaanites represented 
 their god corporeally as the powerful steer, the Christians chose 
 the patient and inoffensive lamb as the type of theirs. The 
 Council of Constantinople in a. d. 692 confirmed this lamb-sym- 
 bol. As Aaron had made a golden calf, Pope Sergius III. pro- 
 cured a lamb to be made of gold and ivory. All who rebelled 
 against its worship were treated as disorderly and heretical. In 
 the time of Charlemagne one of them, Bishop Claudius of Turin, 
 from whom the Waldenses derive their origin, complained: "Isti 
 perversorum dogmatum auctores agnos vivos volunt vorare et in 
 pariete pictos odor are" 
 

 64 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 power. They protect against dangers from 
 fire or water, against storm and hail, sick- 
 ness and witchcraft. 8 Along with the amu- 
 lets the so-called conception -billets, which 
 ■ the Carmelite monks sell for a small sum, 
 are of manifold use. These billets are made 
 of consecrated paper, and heal, if swallowed, 
 diseases natural and supernatural; laid in a 
 cradle guard the child against witchcraft ; 
 buried in the corner of a field protect it 
 against bad weather and destructive insects. 
 Conception-billets are put under the thresh- 
 olds of houses and barns, are attached to 
 beer casks and butter dishes to avert sor- 
 cery. They are fabricated by the monks ac- 
 
 8 Pope Urban Vitus presented an agnus Dei to the Byzantine 
 Emperor. An accompanying note described its wonderful 
 powers in the following monkish-Latin hexameters: — 
 
 Balsamus et munda cera cum chrismatis unda 
 Conficiurd agnum, quod munus do tibi magnum 
 Fonte velut natum per mystica sanclificatum. 
 Jhdgura desursum depellit, et omne malignum 
 Peccatum frangit, ut Chrisii sanguis et angit. 
 Prcegnans servatur, simul et partus liberatur. 
 Dona refert dignis, virtutem destruit ignis. 
 Portatus munde defluclibus eripit undce. 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE CHURCH. 65 
 
 cording to an authenticated formulary which, 
 as characteristic and comparatively brief, de- 
 serves citation: — 
 
 "S tm&mz thee, paper (or parchment), thou whieh 
 Servest the ntt(l$ of humanity, servest as the deposi- 
 tory of ($tnX f $ wonderful xXnH and holy laws, as also 
 aeeording to divine eummantl the marriage eontraet he- 
 txvmx ®ohias and «^arah was written upon thee, the 
 jlaiptees paying: ®hey tooh paper and ginned their 
 marriage wvtnmt through thee, (§ paper, hath also 
 the devit heen eonquered hy the angeL K adjuve thee 
 hy 60d, the |£ord of the nnivmt (Sign of the erossl), 
 the Jta (sign of the erossO, and the §roly $host 
 (Sip of the erossl), who spreads out the heavens as 
 a parchment on whieh he deseriftes as with divine ehar- 
 aeters his ntagnifieeuee. §less (sign of the erossl), 
 <*) (Sod, sanctify (sign of the m$$\) this paper that 
 ^.0 it may frustrate the worn of the gevil! 
 
 " fte who upon his person earner this paper written 
 with holy words, or affixes it to a house, shall he 
 freed from the visitations of ^atan through him who 
 eometh U judge tXit quiefc and dead* 
 
 "S*t us pray. 
 
 "Pighty and vesistless $od, the $od of vengeanee, 
 $od of our fathers, who hast revealed through Poses 
 and the prophets the ftoohs of thy aneieut eovenant 
 
66 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 ami many $wxt\% at thy hinted, and diitet uxm the 
 (Stopl 0f thy $mx t0 Xjtjc written Ixy the evangelic 
 rnxtl ap#tle£ t Mm (£ip ot the tw$& !) and ^aaetity 
 (£ip of to ami) tW \m\nx that thy mevey may 
 Ire made haoum mxta whatwvev $ml £hatt heai 4 with 
 him thi£ jsamfl thing ami t%m holy letter; and that 
 alt tret^mttiw against him fxm the toil and hy 
 the 0ton»# trt ^ataaie witehewft may he frawtaM 
 though $httet mix IpmL %mm. 
 "(fflht ppe* t0 he frimnhtett with holy watev-)" 
 
 With the amulets and these conception-bil- 
 lets belong also in the armory of the Church, 
 the wonder-working relics, and images of the 
 saints. God has ordained graciously that the 
 Church shall not give up its battle against 
 the powers of sin for want of weapons. Its of- 
 fensive and defensive appliances are manifold. 
 Its warriors, the priests, are like knights en- 
 cased in mail from head to foot, and armed 
 with lance, sword, dagger and morning star. 
 Almost every district has its treasure of relics, 
 which, preserved in shrines and exhibited on 
 solemn occasions to the pious people, consti- 
 tutes its palladium, impedes or prevents the 
 attack of hostile forces, and assuages or averts 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE CHURCH. 67 
 
 the ravages of plagues. Not only corporeal 
 relics of saints and martyrs, but also every 
 thing they may have touched during their 
 lifetime, yea, even the very dew-drops upon 
 their graves, are a terror to the fiends and a 
 means of spiritual and bodily strength unto 
 the faithful. The miraculous properties of 
 the images are recounted in a hundred le- 
 gends. By the direct agency of divine power, 
 there exists uninterruptedly between them 
 and the persons they represent a mystical 
 relation. Upon this St. Hieronymus throws 
 some light when he exclaims against Vigilan- 
 tius, who had blindly opposed the worship of 
 images: "You dare prescribe laws to God ! 
 You presume to put the apostles in chains so 
 that they are kept even to the Day of Judg- 
 ment in their prison, and are denied the priv- 
 ilege of being with their Lord, although it is 
 written that they shall be with Him wherever 
 they go ! If the Lamb is omnipresent, we 
 must believe that those who are with the 
 Lamb are omnipresent also. If the devils 
 and the demons rove through the world and 
 
68 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 by their inconceivable rapidity of motion are 
 present everywhere, should then the martyrs, 
 after shedding their blood, remain confined in 
 their coffins and never be able to leave them ! " 
 As old age and death are consequences of 
 Adam's fall, so are almost all ailments pro- 
 duced by that power over man's corporeal 
 nature conceded to Satan, when G-od pro- 
 nounced his curse upon the race. So also are 
 the remaining diseases and infirmities of man, 
 called either rightly or wrongly natural, cured 
 with greatest certainty by invoking the help 
 of Grod. Therefore the mediator between Grod 
 and men, the Church, through its servants is 
 the only sure and only legitimate physician. 
 [" Operatio sanandi est in ecclesia per verba, 
 ritus, exoreismos, aquam, salem, lierbas, idque 
 nedum contra diabolos et effectus magicos, sed 
 et morbos omnes."] The priest effects cures 
 in behalf of the Church and in the name of 
 Grod by means of prayer, the laying on of 
 hands, exorcism, relics and consecrated natu- 
 ral means, especially water, salt and oil. In 
 doing this he acts as the visible delegate of an 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE CHURCH. 69 
 
 unseen higher physician, the saint ordained of 
 God to be the healer of the sickness. For 
 every affliction has its physician among the 
 ranks of the saints. St. Valentine cures epi- 
 lepsy, St. Gervasius rheumatic pains, St. Mi- 
 chael de Sanatis cancer and tumors, St. Judas 
 coughs, St. Ovidius deafness, St. Sebastian 
 contagious fevers and poisonous bites, St. 
 Apollonia toothache, St. Clara and St. Lucia 
 rheum in the eyes, and so on. The legends 
 relate wonderful effects of the healing powers 
 possessed by St. Damianus, St. Patrick and 
 St. Hubert. The terrible disease of hydro- 
 phobia was cured by the last named. In the 
 cloisters in Luxembourg named after this 
 saint, ' hydrophobia was cured many years 
 after his death by bringing the afflicted into 
 the church during the progress of the service, 
 and pressing a hair from the saint's mantle 
 into a slight incision made for the occasion in 
 his forehead. For the benefit of those who 
 lived far from the cloister, the so-called " Hu- 
 bertus-bands " and " Hubertus-keys " were 
 consecrated; these were applied, heated white- 
 
70 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 hot, to the wound. 9 Similar curative agen- 
 cies might be mentioned by hundreds. 
 
 Among all afflictions, the state of being pos- 
 sessed by devils occupies the most remarkable 
 place in the annals of the Church, and is seen 
 to have required the most powerful exorcisms 
 for its cure. The ecclesiastical pathology de- 
 clares that in this disease the devil is unhid- 
 den, while in all others he is concealed. The 
 exorciser who is to expel the fiend appears in 
 full priestly vesture; incense and consecrated 
 wax tapers are lighted, all the objects sur- 
 rounding the demoniac are sprinkled with 
 holy water, the air around is purified by the 
 pronunciation of certain formulas; then follow 
 fervent prayers and finally the desperate and 
 awful struggle between the demon, now con- 
 vulsively distorting the limbs of his victim and 
 uttering by his lips the most harrowing blas- 
 phemies, and the priest, who employs more 
 
 9 As late as 1784 a statute was issued by Carl Theodor, Elector 
 of Pfalz, referring to the magic power of St. Hubert-relics, and 
 forbidding the employment of "worldly" remedies against the 
 bite of mad dogs. 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE CHURCH. 71 
 
 and more powerful adjurations until the vic- 
 tory finally is his. 
 
 The secular medical art — that relying up- 
 on natural means — as either superfluous, or 
 as strongly tainted with heresy, must be de- 
 spised. Dissection, in order to investigate 
 the structure of the human body, is pre- 
 sumption; it can even be asked with reason 
 if it does not argue contempt for the doc- 
 trine of the final resurrection. The secular 
 art of healing was consequently for a long 
 time confined to the infidel Jews. But when 
 princes and the opulent, weakly apprehend- 
 ing the insufficiency of the word, the relics 
 and the consecrated remedies, had begun to 
 keep physicians, the profane art of medicine 
 became a lucrative profession, and schools for 
 its cultivation were established under royal 
 protection. Such is that of Salerno, which 
 the warders of Zion can not regard without 
 suspicion. It is a school which prescribes 
 pedantic rules for diet, as if one's diet could 
 protect against the attacks of the devil ! The 
 Greek pagan Hippocrates, who for a long 
 
72 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 time wandered about with Jews and Arabs, 
 thus finds at last a settled abode within its 
 walls, — Hippocrates who had to assert of 
 clemonianism (morbus sacer) itself that it is 
 "nowise more divine, nowise more infernal, 
 than any other disease ! ;J When the teacher 
 is such, what must the disciples be ? The 
 Church will not forbid absolutely the prac- 
 tice of medicine, since it may do some good 
 in the case of external injury, or in time of 
 pestilence ; but she must keep strict watch 
 over the orthodoxy of those who cultivate 
 this art. At several councils (as at Bheims 
 in 1131, the second Lateran in 1139, and at 
 Tours, 1163) she has strenuously prohibited 
 her servants from having any thing to do 
 with this suspected profession. Experience 
 has taught, however, not to exaggerate the 
 dangers attending it. The secular physicians 
 must frequently concede that such and such 
 a sickness is caused by witchcraft, and con- 
 sequently is of supernatural origin. Slan- 
 derers might allege that such a declaration 
 is more convenient than an investigation into 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE CHURCH. 73 
 
 the causes of the disease in the natural way, 
 and less unpleasant than acknowledging one's 
 ignorance. But be this as it may: the conces- 
 sion implies a recognition of the supernatu- 
 ralism of the Church, and may therefore be 
 rather recommended than reprehended. 
 
 "It is," says Thomas Aquinas, "a dogma 
 of faith that the demons can produce wind, 
 storms, and rain of fire from heaven. The 
 atmosphere is a battle-field between angels 
 and devils. The latter work the constant in- 
 jury of man, the former his melioration; and 
 the consequence is that changeableness of 
 weather which threatens to frustrate the 
 hopes of husbandry. And when Lucifer is 
 able to bestow even upon man — on sorcerers 
 and wizards— the power to destroy the fields, 
 the vineyards and dwellings of man by rain, 
 hail and lightning, is it to be wondered at if 
 the Church, which is man's protection against 
 the devil, and whose especial calling it is to 
 fight him, should in this sphere also be his 
 counterpoise, and should seek from the treas- 
 ury of its divine power, means adequate to 
 
74 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 frustrate his atmospheric mischiefs ? To these 
 means belong the church bells, provided they 
 have been duly consecrated and baptized. 
 The aspiring steeples around which cluster 
 the low dwellings of men, are to be likened, 
 when the bells in them are ringing, to the 
 hen spreading its protecting wings over its 
 chickens ; for the tones of the consecrated 
 metal repel the demons and avert storm and 
 lightning 77 (" Vivos voco, mortuos plango, SUL- 
 phura frango, 77 a common inscription on 
 church bells). Tillers of the soil who desire 
 especial protection from the Church for their 
 harvests, pay it tithes for a blessing. Dur- 
 ing protracted drought the priests make in- 
 tercession and inaugurate rain-processions, in 
 which images of the Virgin are borne into 
 the fields, which are sprinkled with holy 
 water while the weather-collect is chanted. 10 
 
 10 In the year 1240 a large rain-procession was held in Liit- 
 tich. Three times repeated it failed of all effect, "because in 
 the supplication of all saints God's mother had been forgotten." 
 In a new procession "Salve regina" was therefore sung, and 
 the rain immediately came down with such violence that the de- 
 vout procession was dispersed. — The clsrgy sometimes, in order 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE CHURCH 75 
 
 If the fields are visited by hurtful insects, 
 the Church has remedies against them also. 
 It commands them in the name of God to 
 depart, and if they do not obey, a regular 
 process is instituted against them, which ends 
 in their exemplary punishment; for they are 
 excommunicated by the Church. Such pro- 
 cesses were very frequently resorted to in 
 the Middle Ages, and a couple of such in- 
 stances will be cited. 
 
 In the year 1474, the may-bug committed 
 great depredations in the neighborhood of 
 Berne. When the authorities of the city 
 had sought relief from the bishop of Lau- 
 sanne, Benoit cle Montferrand, against this 
 scourge, he determined to issue a letter of ex- 
 communication, which was solemnly read by 
 a priest in the churchyard of Berne. "Thou 
 irrational, imperfect creature, thou may-bug," 
 thus the letter commenced, "thou whose kind 
 was never enclosed in Noah's ark ! in the 
 
 to produce rain, would lead a donkey before the gate of the 
 church, hang the litany about his neck, put a wafer in his 
 mouth, and then bury the animal alive. 
 
76 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 name of my gracious lord, the bishop of Lau- 
 sanne, by the power of the glorified Trinity 
 through the merits of Jesus Christ, and by 
 the obedience you owe the Holy Church, I 
 command you may-bugs, all in common and 
 each one in particular, to depart from all 
 places where nourishment for men and cat- 
 tle germinates and grows. 77 The letter ends 
 with a summons to the insects, to present 
 themselves on the sixth day thereafter, if 
 they do not disappear before that time, at 
 one o'clock, p. m., at Wivelsburg, and assume 
 the responsibility before the court of the 
 gracious lord of Lausanne. This letter was 
 likewise read from the pulpit while the con- 
 gregation, kneeling, repeated "three Pater- 
 nosters and three Ave Marias." Arrange- 
 ments were made beforehand for a legal trial 
 with strict attention to all professional forms. 
 Among these was of course that the accused 
 should have a lawyer. But when no advo- 
 cate in Berne would consent to appear in be- 
 half of the insects, the bishop devised the 
 plan of summoning from hell the shade of an 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE CHURCH. 77 
 
 infamous lawyer named Perrodet, who had 
 died a few years previously, and of directing 
 him to plead the cause of the may-bugs with 
 the same diligence he had so often displayed 
 in his lifetime in defence of vile clients. But 
 in spite of many summons, neither Perrodet 
 nor his clients deigned to appear. After the 
 expiration of the time fixed for beginning the 
 defence, and when certain doubts concerning 
 the proper form of procedure had been re- 
 moved, the episcopal tribunal finally gave its 
 verdict, which was excommunication in the 
 name of the Holy Trinity, "to you, accursed 
 vermin, that are called may-bugs, and which 
 can not even be counted among the animals.' 7 
 The government ordered the authorities of 
 the afflicted district to report concerning the 
 good effects of the excommunication; "But," 
 a chronicle of the time complains, "no effect 
 was observed, because of our sins." 
 
 Since any neglect of legal forms was thought 
 to deprive a judgment of its magical as well 
 as legal power, the most scrupulous care was 
 exercised in the conduct of these frequently 
 
78 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 recurring processes against may-bugs, 'grass- 
 hoppers, cabbage-worms, field-rats and other 
 noxious vermin. There is yet extant a de- 
 tailed and luminous document by the learned 
 Bartholomeus Chassanseus (born 1480), in 
 which the question if, and how, such pests 
 should be proceeded against in the courts is 
 carefully considered: whether they should ap- 
 pear personally or by deputy; whether they 
 are subject to a spiritual or a secular tribu- 
 nal, and if the penalty of excommunication 
 can be applied to them. He proves on many 
 grounds that the jurisdiction to which they 
 are accountable is the spiritual, and that they 
 may properly be excommunicated. Still the 
 question of jurisdiction remained unsettled, 
 and a civil prosecution of the field-rats in 
 Tyrol, 1519-20, proves among other things 
 that a secular tribunal sometimes considered 
 itself justified in deciding such suits. The 
 peasant Simon Fliss appeared before Wil- 
 liam of Hasslingen, judge in Grlurns and Mais 
 (Ober- In- valley), as plaintiff against the 
 field-rats which were committing great dep- 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE CHURCH. 79 
 
 redations in his parish. The court then ap- 
 pointed Hans Grinebner, a citizen of Grlurns, 
 to be the advocate of the accused, and fur- 
 nished him, before witnesses, with the re- 
 quisite commission. Thereupon the plain- 
 tiff chose as his advocate Schwarz Minig, and 
 obtained from the tribunal upon demand a 
 warrant of authority for him likewise. On 
 the da}?- of trial, the Wednesday after St. 
 Philip's and St. James's day, many witnesses 
 were examined, establishing that the rats 
 had caused great destruction. Schwarz Minig 
 then made his final plea that the noxious an- 
 imals should be charged to withdraw from 
 mischief, as otherwise the people of Stilf 
 could not pay the annual tithes to their high 
 patron. Grinebner, counsel for the defence, 
 could not and would not make exception to 
 the testimony, but tried to convince the court 
 that his clients u enjo}^ed a certain right of 
 usufruct which could hardly be denied them." 
 If the court were of another opinion and con- 
 sidered it best to eject them, he yet hoped 
 they would first be granted another place 
 
80 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 where they could support themselves. Be- 
 sides there should be given them at their de- 
 parture a sufficient escort to protect them 
 against their enemies, whether cat, dog, or 
 other adversaries; and he also hoped that, if 
 any of the rats were pregnant, time might be 
 allowed them to be delivered and afterwards 
 depart in safety with their progeny. The de- 
 cision was rendered in the following terms: 
 ''After accusation and defence, after state- 
 ment and contradiction, and after due con- 
 sideration of all that pertains to justice, it is 
 by this sentence determined that those nox- 
 ious animals which are called field-rats must, 
 within two weeks after the promulgation of 
 this judgment, depart and forever remain far 
 aloof from the fields and the meadows of Stilf. 
 But if one or several of the animals are preg- 
 nant, or unable on account of their youth to 
 follow, then shall they enjoy during further 
 two weeks safety and protection from every 
 body, and after these two weeks depart." 
 
 We can form some impression of the im- 
 mense power of prayer and exorcism when 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE CHURCH 81 
 
 we consider that the influence of the will and 
 the idea expressed in the word co-operate in 
 them with the power of the word itself as a 
 mere form. For the material word, the sound 
 caught by the ear, the formula, as such, exer- 
 cises a magical effect without one's knowing 
 its meaning. The mass of the people with 
 their ignorance of the official language of the 
 Church and of learning, would he badly off 
 if those "Paternosters" and "Ave Marias/' 
 committed to memory without understanding 
 them, should be spiritually ineffectual, — if the 
 Latin mass to which the congregation listens 
 should be wanting in edifying and sanctifying 
 power because it is not comprehended. The 
 formularies of the Church established at dif- 
 ferent times and for various purposes are for 
 this reason of high importance and must be 
 followed conscientiously. 11 A single proof of 
 
 11 Especially was the Church of the Middle Ages rich in awful 
 formularies of malediction, testifying to an enormous brutaliza- 
 tion of thought and feeling. A single specimen of these formu- 
 laries will be more than sufficient to illustrate: — 
 
 "By the might, power and authority of God, the Almighty 
 Father, of the Son and of the Holy Ghost and in the name of 
 6 
 
82 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 their extraordinary power may be instanced 
 here. In the year 1532 the devil brought 
 into the heavens a huge comet, which threat- 
 
 tlie Holy Virgin the mother of our Lord Jesus Christ, by the 
 holy angels, archangels, St. Michael and St. John the Baptist, in 
 the name of the holy apostle Peter and all the apostles, in the 
 name of the holy Stephen and all the holy martyrs, and St. 
 Adelgunda and all the holy yirgins, and of all the saints in 
 heaven and on earth to whom power is given to bind and 
 loose, — we curse, execrate and exclude from the mother Church 
 through the bond of malediction (here follows the name of the 
 persons). May their children be orphaned; may they be cursed 
 upon the field, cursed in the city, in the forest, in their houses 
 and barns, in their chamber and their bed, in the town-hall, in 
 the village, on land and sea; may they be cursed in the church, 
 in the churchyard, in the court-room, on the public square and 
 in war; whether they be talking, sleeping, waking, eating or 
 drinking, whether they be going or resting, or doing any other 
 thing, let them be accursed in soul and body, reason and all 
 their senses: cursed be their progeny, cursed be the fruit of 
 their land, cursed be all their limbs, head, nose, mouth, teeth, 
 throat, eyes, and eyelashes, brain, larynx, tongue, breast, lungs, 
 liver, legs, and arms, skin and hair; cursed be every thing liv- 
 ing and moving in them from head to foot, etc. I conjure thee, 
 Lucifer, and all your crew, by the Father, the Son and the Holy 
 Ghost, by the incarnation and birth of Christ; I conjure thee by 
 the power and the virtue of all saints, that thou never leave them 
 in quiet, night or day, until thou have brought them to ruin, 
 destroyed them by water, or led them to the gallows, or caused 
 them to be torn by wild beasts, or their throat to be cut by ene- 
 mies, or their bodies to be destroyed by fire," etc., etc. 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE CHURCH. 83 
 
 enecl earth and man with drought and pesti- 
 lence; but the pope solemnly banished the 
 forbidding omen, — and behold! in a short time 
 it disappeared, having clay by day diminished 
 through the power of the papal anathema. 
 What a holy word may avail by virtue of its 
 sound [flatus vocis) alone, is indicated in the 
 legend of the tame starling, which was saved 
 from the claws of the hawk just at the mo- 
 ment its death-agony had forced from it the 
 words it had learned to repeat " Ave Maria. 77 
 Upon the power of the word as its founda- 
 tion, rests the papal custom of consecrating 
 bread, wine, oil, salt, tapers, water, bells, 
 fields, meadows, houses, standards and weap- 
 ons. u With such abuses, such superstition, 
 and diabolical arts was the priesthood filled 
 during papal ascendency ' 7 — thus complains 
 an old Protestant theologian who had an eye 
 to that surplus of magic which the Catholic 
 Church possessed over and above that of the 
 Lutheran, but who was blind to the com- 
 mon welfare — "and therefore such things 
 are in vogue even among common men. 
 
84 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 What was the chief thing in the mass if not 
 the wonder-working words of blessing, when 
 the priest pronounced the four words or the 
 six syllables ' Hoc est corpus meum 1 (this is 
 my body) over the bread, breathed upon 
 it, and made the sign of the cross three 
 times over it, pretending that the bread was 
 thereby converted into the flesh of Christ? 
 In the same way he transformed the wine in 
 the chalice into the blood of Christ, though 
 no such power is given to syllables and 
 words. He bound the Holy Ghost in the 
 water, the salt, the oil, the tapers, the spices, 
 the stone, wood or earth, when he conse- 
 crated churches, altars, churchyards, when 
 he blessed the meat, the eggs, and the like, 
 and when on Easter Eve he consecrated the 
 fire that it should do no damage (though I, 
 God save me, have found out that our vil- 
 lage was utterly consumed four clays after 
 such consecration), when he baptized and 
 sanctified bells that their ringing might dis- 
 pel evil influences, quiet tempests, and the 
 like/ 7 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE CHURCH. 85 
 
 The organization of monasteries is to be 
 regarded as the defensive system of the 
 Church, guarding and protecting the terri- 
 tory it has conquered from the devil. As 
 the Mongolian on his irruption into En- 
 rope found innumerable steeps crowned with 
 strongly fortified castles, the very number of 
 which deterred from any attempt at siege, 
 so Satan and his hosts find the Christian 
 world strewn with spiritual strongholds, each 
 of which encloses an arsenal filled with 
 mighty weapons for offensive as well as de- 
 fensive warfare. Every monastery has its 
 master magician, who sells agni Dei, con- 
 ception-billets, magic incense, salt and tapers 
 which, have been consecrated on Candlemas 
 Day, palms consecrated on Palm Sunday, 
 flowers besprinkled with holy water on As- 
 cension Day, and many other appliances be- 
 longing to the great magical apparatus of 
 the Church. 
 
 This consecrated enginery being so vari- 
 ous and complete, it might have been ex- 
 pected that the people would be content, 
 
86 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 and seek no further expedients than these 
 constantly at hand. But, alas ! a people's 
 magic of infernal origin is abroad, and ram- 
 pant by the side of the holy magic of the 
 Church- and by it Satan tempts the careless, 
 the curious and the irresolute. Even many 
 priests are tainted with it. The holy Boni- 
 face, and many popes and monkish chron- 
 iclers after him, bitterly lament that the 
 lower clergy compound love - potions and 
 practice divinatory arts, using even the holy 
 appurtenances of the Church, as the host, to 
 fortify the efficacy of their diabolical charms. 
 Since the Church tries to reduce all con- 
 ditions of life to harmony with itself, it nat- 
 urally follows that it sets its seal also to 
 human jurisprudence. The ordeals which it 
 has found employed by some of the nations 
 it has converted, exactly suit its system. It 
 receives them, consequently, as resting on a 
 right idea, 12 makes them what they were not 
 before, a common practice, and gives de- 
 
 12 A biblical ground for ordeals was found in Numbers v. 
 12-28. 
 
1 
 
 THE MAGIC OF THE CHURCH. 87 
 
 tailed rules concerning the chants, prayers, 
 conjurations and masses with which they 
 should be accompanied. When a person un- 
 der accusation or suspicion is to undergo the 
 ordeal by water, for example, the priest is to 
 lead him to the church, and cause him kneel- 
 ing to pronounce three formulas in which 
 God is implored for protection. Then follow 
 mass and the holy communion. When the 
 accused receives the wafer the priest says: 
 " Be this flesh of our Lord thy test to-day. 7J 
 Then in solemn procession the throng of wit- 
 nesses repair to the spot where the test is to 
 take place. The priest conjures the water, 
 expelling the demons common to this ele- 
 ment,' and commands it to be an obedient 
 instrument of Grod for revealing innocence 
 or crime. The accused is dressed in clean 
 garments, kisses the cross and the gospel, 
 recites a Paternoster and makes the sign of 
 the cross. Then (in the ordeal by hot water) 
 his hand is held in a boiling cauldron : or he 
 is thrown with his hands pinioned and a 
 rope about his waist, into a river. If he 
 
88 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 does not then sink, his guilt is proved. The 
 ordeal by fire consists in walking over glow- 
 ing coals, or carrying red-hot iron, or in 
 being dragged through flames clad in a shirt 
 saturated with wax. By the test of fire the 
 genuineness of relics is also sometimes tested. 
 When in a. d. 1010 some monks who had 
 returned from Jerusalem exhibited the towel 
 with which the disciples had wiped the feet 
 of Christ, some doubts of its genuine charac- 
 ter were raised, but were all removed by 
 this test. One of the most common of all 
 ordeals is the duel. 
 
 God, invoked by the servants of the 
 Church, keeps his protecting hand over in- 
 nocence. Every doubt of this truth argues 
 faint-heartedness bordering on atheism. This 
 thought lies at the foundation not only of the 
 different kinds of ordeals, but also of the tor- 
 ture, which, constantly extended and intensi- 
 fied under the auspices of the Church, was a 
 form of trial sparing the judge much labor, 
 and leading to the goal more surely than the 
 collation of testimony, which, besides being 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE CHURCH. 89 
 
 irksome, hardly ever brings full assurance. 
 Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego felt no 
 pain in the fiery furnace. God gives to in- 
 nocence upon the rack, if not insensibility 
 to pain, at least strength to endure it. But 
 even the arch-fiend, to a certain extent, can 
 protect his subjects. In the case of heretics 
 and witches it is therefore needful to resort 
 to the intensest torture; to exhaust, so to 
 speak, to the last drop, the springs of pain 
 in human nerves, under the hand of skilled 
 tormentors. If then the instruments of tor- 
 ture are previously conjured and sanctified 
 by the priest, and if he stands at the side of 
 the accused ready to interrupt with constant 
 question the diabolic formulas of alleviation 
 which undoubtedly the sufferer murmurs in- 
 wardly, then a candid and reliable confession 
 may reasonably be expected, in spite of all 
 efforts to the contrary by the devil. In the 
 "Witch-hammer" (Malleus Malificarum) the 
 ecclesiastical and magical plan of justice cele- 
 brates its triumph. This work, bearing the 
 sanction of the pope, contains full directions 
 
90 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 for the judge presiding in witch- trials. It is, 
 in fact, a hammer which crushes whatever 
 it falls upon. The judge who carefully fol- 
 lows these directions may be confident that 
 Satan himself can not save any one who is 
 under accusation; only God and his holy an- 
 gels can rescue him, by direct miracle, from 
 death in the flames. 13 
 
 He who finds a judicial system which ap- 
 peals constantly to the intercession of God 
 of questionable value, may consider that the 
 history of the Church, the experiences of its 
 saints and servants are a succession of divine 
 miracles. God is not chary of his miracles 
 when recognized, and the servants of the 
 Church are in possession of the apostolic 
 power and mandate to perform them. 
 
 Another question is, how are the divine 
 miracles to be distinguished from the infer- 
 nal ? All attempts of the acutest scholastics 
 
 13 The " Witch-hammer " will be more fully described here- 
 after. The student of history should not neglect this volume, 
 which is the ripest fruit of Catholic dualism, and clearly shows 
 the results to which it tends. 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE CHURCH. 91 
 
 to establish a rule of definite separation for 
 these two kinds of miracles hare failed. 
 They are revealed under identical forms, 
 and even the moral perceptions can detect 
 no difference, since Satan is able to trans- 
 form himself into an angel of light. Rea- 
 son must also acknowledge its incapacity 
 even in this respect, and rely on the Holy 
 Ghost ever active in the Church and es- 
 pecially in its head. The power of divine 
 truth and inspiration which was poured out 
 upon the apostles on the day of Pentecost, 
 has been transmitted like a magnetic stream 
 from Peter, the first bishop of Rome, to his 
 successors by the laying on of hands, and 
 is in a certain measure imparted, by the 
 sacrament of ordination, to every member 
 of the clerical hierarchy. 
 
 The survey of the magic of the Church 
 which has been presented above, ought per- 
 haps to be completed, not by pursuing the 
 tedious path which lies before us through 
 
92 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 continued description of ecclesiastical customs 
 and opinion, but by simply formulating the 
 general truth : Every symbol, every external to- 
 ken, to which is attributed an independent power 
 for sanctification and an immediate moral influ- 
 ence, is Magic. May the Protestant reader, 
 for whom we are here writing, examine with 
 this maxim in how far the Reformation, which 
 aims to restore to internal authority — the rea- 
 son and free-will of the individual — its rights, 
 has succeeded in its task. Luther and Calvin 
 assailed many magical usages, and pruned 
 many branches from the tree of dualism, but 
 still allowed its vigorous trunk to remain 
 unscathed. But a dualistic religious system 
 must, on account of the unreasonable cosmi- 
 cal theory on which it rests, sooner or later 
 attack again the inner authority and make 
 itself the sole and absolute external one. It 
 must of necessity degenerate to a statuary 
 fetichism or fall before a complete unitarian 
 reformation. Our day witnesses the conflict 
 between these opposite ideas. On the one 
 side, the belief in a personal spiritual adver- 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE CHURCH. 93 
 
 sary of mankind, preached to the masses from 
 a thousand pulpits, hangs suspended like a 
 sword of Damocles over the head of civiliza- 
 tion; on the other side, philosophy and the 
 science of nature diffuse a rational and unita- 
 rian theory of the universe and human exist- 
 ence through a constantly enlarging circle. 
 To him who wishes to take part in this all- 
 important struggle, we would commend these 
 words of the noble Bunsen : u " Wherever in 
 religion, or state, or civilization, in art or 
 science, the inner is developed more strenu- 
 ously, and the spiritual earnestly sought after, 
 be it with more or less transformation of what 
 is existing, there progress is at hand • for from 
 the inner, life comes to the external, from the 
 centre to the circumference. There is also 
 the way which leads to life. There new paths 
 are opened to the soul, and genius lifts its 
 wings with divine assurance. If this is true, 
 the contrary must take place wherever the 
 external life is more and more exalted, where 
 the token supersedes more and more the es- 
 
 " "Gott in der Geschichte," HI. 
 
94 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 sence, the symbol and the external work the 
 inner act and conscience, where the superficies 
 is taken for the content, the outer monotony 
 for life's uniformity, and appearances for truth. 
 There a luckless future is in waiting, what- 
 ever be the aspect of the present." 
 
III. 
 
 THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. 
 
 We find ourselves in a dismal labyrinth of 
 narrow, winding streets, now and then issu- 
 ing into some open space before a guild-hall 
 or a church. The objects which meet our 
 gaze in this strange city do not solicit pause 
 or reflection; for we have seen essentially the 
 same type of homes and humanity in many an- 
 other city which we have wandered through 
 in our search for the stone of wisdom. We 
 therefore continue on our way. The build- 
 ings of the university are said to be in the 
 neighborhood, and we turn the corner to the 
 right, and again to the left, until we come upon 
 it. The lecture-hour approaches. Professors 
 draped in stiff mantles and wearing the scholas- 
 tic cap on their supremely wise foreheads, 
 wend their way to the temples of knowledge 
 
96 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 at the portals of which flocks of students 
 wait. We recognize their various and familiar 
 types : the new-matriculated look as usual, 
 their cheeks still retaining the glow of early 
 youth, their hearts still humble, perhaps still 
 held captive by the sweet delusion that the 
 walls by which they wait are the propylsea to 
 all the secrets of earth and heaven. Just as 
 readily recognized are the parchment-worms, 
 destined one day to shine as lights in the 
 Church and in the domain of science, whether 
 they now toil themselves pale and melancholic 
 over their catence, their summce and sententice, 
 or bear with unfeigned self-satisfaction the 
 precious weight of terms which lifts them so 
 conspicuously above the ignorant mass of 
 mortals. And among the throng of the first 
 named still fresh with youth, and these already 
 dried pedants, we find also the far-famed third 
 class of students, adventurers assembled from 
 all quarters under the protection of univer- 
 sity-privileges, — those gentlemen with beard- 
 ed cheek, and faces swelled by drinking and 
 scarred by combat, with terribly long and 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. 97 
 
 broad swords dangling at their side, — the 
 heroes of that never ending Iliad which the 
 apprentices of learning and the guilds enact 
 nightly in the darkness of the lanes, who may 
 yet turn out some day the most pious of con- 
 ventical priors, the gravest doctors and the 
 very severest burgomasters in Christendom, 
 unless before that time they meet their fate 
 upon the gallows, or on the field of battle, or 
 as scholares vac/antes in the ditch or by the 
 roadside. 
 
 Shall we enter and listen to some of these 
 lectures which are about to be delivered? 
 Our letter of academic membership will open 
 the doors to us, if we desire. To the left in 
 the vaulted hall the professor of medicine 
 has commenced his lecture. With astonish- 
 ing subtlety and penetration he discusses the 
 highly important question, before propound- 
 ed by Petrus de Abano, but not as yet fully 
 solved, — "an caput sit factum propter cerebrum 
 vet ocnlos " (whether the head was formed for ' 
 the sake of the brain or the eyes).- To the 
 right the professor of theology leads us into 
 
98 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 one of the dim mysteries of the Church by 
 ventilating the question what Peter would 
 have done with the bread and wine, had he 
 distributed the elements while the body of 
 Christ in unchanged reality was yet hanging 
 on the cross.* A little farther on in this 
 mouldy vault we find the workshop of phi- 
 losophy, where a master in the art of ab- 
 stract reasoning deduces the distinction be- 
 tween universalia ante rem and universalia in 
 re. In yonder furthest room a jurisconsult 
 expounds a passage in the pandects. — Or per- 
 haps you would rather not choose at all? 
 You smile sadly. Alas ! like myself you have 
 good reason for complaining with Faust : — ■ 
 
 I have, alas! Philosophy, 
 
 Med'cine, and Jurisprudence too, 
 And to my cost Theology, 
 
 With ardent labor studied through. 
 And here I stand, with all my lore, 
 Poor fool, no wiser than before. 
 
 and if you add like him, 
 
 Hence have I now applied myself to magic, 
 
 * Yet in the days of Erasmus of Eotterdam the theologians 
 were making great ado over this knotty problem. 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. 99 
 
 we shall bring back to our minds the ob- 
 ject of our burning desires, the hope which 
 cheers us that finally the veil will be torn 
 from the face of the Isis-image, and that we 
 shall behold the unspeakable face to face, 
 even though her looks burn us to ashes. 
 Let us turn our back upon this tragi-comic 
 seat of learning, where, as everywhere else, 
 hoary-headed fools are teaching young chick- 
 en-heads to admire nonsense, and young ea- 
 gle-souls to despair of knowledge. It is not 
 far hence direct — as direct as the winding 
 lanes permit — to that great magician who 
 has taken up his abode in this city. At the 
 feet of that master let us seat ourselves. 
 "We shall there slake our burning thirst with 
 at least a few drops of that knowledge which 
 through by-gone ages has been flowing in a 
 subterranean channel, though from the same 
 sources as the streams of Paradise. And if 
 we are disappointed there, — well, then you, 
 if you so choose, can quench your longing 
 for truth in the whirlpool of pleasure and 
 adventure. / shall go into a monastery, 
 
100 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 seek the narrowest of its cells, watch, pray, 
 scourge forth my blood in streams; or I shall 
 go to India, sit down upon the ground and 
 stare at the tip of my nose, — stare at it and 
 never cease, year out and year in, until all 
 consciousness is extinguished. Agreed, then, 
 is it not? ...... 
 
 We are arrived in the very loneliest quar- 
 ter of the town, and the most dreary limits 
 of the quarter, where old crumbling houses 
 group themselves in inextricable confusion 
 along the city wall, and from their gable 
 windows fix their vacant, hypochondriacal 
 looks upon the open fields beyond. A tow- 
 er, crowning the wall of the fort upon this 
 side, now serves the great scientist as an 
 observatory and dwelling, given him by the 
 burgomaster and the council of the city. 
 He was for a long time private physician to 
 the Queen of France, but has now retired 
 to this lonely place from the pleasures, the 
 distinctions, and the dangers of life at court, 
 in order to devote himself quietly to research 
 and study. He has a protector in the prince- 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. 101 
 
 archbishop resident in the city; and as the 
 professor of theology has certified at the re- 
 quest of this same prince-bishop to his strict 
 orthodoxy, the city authorities thought to 
 persuade him to receive the honorable and 
 lucrative position of town -astrologer, not 
 heeding the assertion of the monks that he 
 was a wizard, and that his black spaniel 
 was in reality none other than the devil 
 himself. 
 
 A magician never suffers himself to be in- 
 terrupted in his labors, whether engaged in 
 contemplating the nature of spirits, in watch- 
 ing the heavens, or in the elaboration of the 
 quinta essentia, the final essence, with his cru- 
 cibles. Oh ! what world-wide hopes, what 
 solemn emotions, what inexpressible tension 
 of soul must accompany these investigations ! 
 Gold, which rules the world, here falls from 
 the tree of knowledge as a fruit over-ripe into 
 the bosom of the master. And what is gold 
 with all the power it possesses, and all the 
 enjoyment it commands, compared with the 
 ability to control heaven and earth and the 
 
102 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 spirits of hell, compared with the capacity to 
 summon by the means of lustrations, seals, 
 characters and exorcisms the angels hover- 
 ing in the higher spheres, or tame to obedi- 
 ence the demons which fill the immensity of 
 space ? And what again is this power com- 
 pared with the pure celestial knowledge to 
 which magic delivers the key ? a knowledge 
 as much transcending the wisdom of angels as 
 the son's place in his father's house is supe- 
 rior to a servant's ! Perchance the magician 
 at this very moment is deeply absorbed in 
 some investigation, and within a hair's breadth 
 of the revelation of some new and dazzling 
 truth. Let us consider before we venture to 
 ask admittance. Let us pause a moment be- 
 fore this iron-bound door, and recover our 
 breath. 
 
 Ye men of science in this nineteenth cen- 
 tury, how miserable you would be had you 
 not once for all determined to limit your 
 hopes to a minimum ! To die when you have 
 gleaned and contributed but a single straw to 
 the harvest of science, is the fate to which 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. 103 
 
 you subject yourselves. The one among you 
 who has brought to notice a hitherto unknown 
 snail or flower, deems himself not to have 
 lived in vain. To have discovered a formula 
 under which a group of phenomena can be 
 arranged, is already a triumph. This resig- 
 nation which makes each one among you, 
 even the greatest, only an insignificant detail- 
 worker upon the immense labor whose com- 
 pletion you contemplate at an infinite remove, 
 and the very outlines of which you ignore, — ■ 
 this resignation is sublime, though supremely 
 painful to the aspiring soul. The individual 
 laborer for his part abstains from all hope of 
 seeing the whole truth, and works for his gen- 
 eration and futurity. Even the philosopher 
 who undertakes to explain the framework of 
 the macrocosm, does not see in his system a 
 final solution of the ' ' problem of cosmical ex- 
 planation," but only a link in the long chain 
 of development. He foresees the fall of his 
 theories, satisfied, perhaps, if the traces of his 
 error keep his successor on a straighter path. 
 It is the race and not the individual which 
 
104 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 works in your work; which continues it when 
 you have grown weary and been forgotten. 
 It is a collective activity like that of ants and 
 bees. But the magician stands alone ! To 
 be sure he receives what the past may offer, 
 ■ — but only to enclose himself with this treas- 
 ure, and improve it by the immense wealth 
 of his own mind. He believes in this immen- 
 sity. He believes that the powers of all the 
 generations are stored up in the bosom of the 
 individual, and he hopes to accomplish alone 
 what you faint-heartedly leave to the multi- 
 tude of incalculable centuries ! 
 
 We knocked upon the door ponderous 
 with its bolts of iron. It opened as by an 
 unseen hand. No servant interposed either 
 welcome or remonstrance as we mounted the 
 dark spiral stairs. Unannounced we entered 
 the hall of the great magician. Along the 
 arched ceiling of the rooms whose green lead- 
 fastened window panes admitted but a scanty 
 light, floated a fragrant vapor from the cell 
 in the extreme background, where we could 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. 105 
 
 see the magician himself clad in a snow-white 
 mantle reaching to his feet, and standing sol- 
 emnly beside an incense-altar. Upon his 
 head he wore a diadem on which was en- 
 graved the unspeakable name, Tetragram- 
 maton, and in his hand he held a metallic 
 plate which, as we soon learned, was made 
 of electrum and signed with the signatures 
 of coming centuries. 
 
 We paused and stammered a word of ex- 
 cuse for the interruption we had caused him. 
 A smile of satisfaction broke upon his face 
 when he had momentarily surveyed us, and 
 he bade us welcome. 
 
 "You are the very persons whose arrival 
 I have' been expecting, and whom it has cost 
 me much trouble to summon,' 7 he said. "You 
 are the spirits of the nineteenth century, con- 
 jured to appear before a man of the fifteenth. 
 You are called from the ante-chambers where 
 the souls of the unborn await their entrance 
 upon earth. But the images of the century 
 to which your future mortal life belongs 
 dwell in the depths of your consciousness. 
 
106 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 These images you shall show me. It is for 
 this that I have summoned you, for I wish 
 to cast a glance into the future." 
 
 I was seized with a strange, almost horrid 
 feeling. I now remembered that I and my 
 companions had transported ourselves, by the 
 use of means which stirs up the entire re- 
 productive forces of the imagination, from 
 the actual nineteenth century, back to the 
 long-past fifteenth, that we might see it live 
 before our eyes, not in dissevered traits as 
 a past age is wont to be preserved in books, 
 but in the completeness of its own multi- 
 formity. Who was right, the magician or 
 myself? Which was the one only seemingly 
 living, he or I ? At what hour did the hand 
 on the clock of time point at that moment ? 
 Granted that time is absolutely nothing but 
 a conceptual form without independent re- 
 ality; as long as I live in time I believe in 
 its ordered course, and do not wish to see 
 its golden thread entangled. I did not wish 
 that the spirit which I had summoned should 
 be my master and degrade me to a product 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. 107 
 
 of his own imagination. I summoned cour- 
 age and exclaimed: — ■ 
 
 "We have wandered through many cities, 
 great magician, to find you. We finally 
 stand in this your sanctuary. We see these 
 gloomy Gothic arches over our heads ; we 
 see your venerable figure before us; we be- 
 hold these folios and strange instruments 
 which surround you ; we look out through 
 these windows and behold on one side towers 
 and house-tops, on the other fields, meadows 
 and the huts of serfs, and yonder in the dis- 
 tance the castle of a knight who is suspected 
 of night-attacks upon the trains of the mer- 
 chants as they approach the city. All these 
 things stand real and present before our eyes: 
 but, nevertheless, great magician, it is all. 
 yourself included, a product of our magic, of 
 the power of our own imagination, not of 
 your magic. It is in order to make some ac- 
 quaintance with the latter that we are come. 
 It is not we who are to answer your ques- 
 tions, but you ours." 
 
 The magician smiled. He persisted in his 
 
108 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 view, and I in mine. The contested ques- 
 tion could not be decided, and it was laid 
 aside. But along with my consciousness of 
 belonging to a period of critical activity, my 
 doubts had awakened — my vivid hope a mo- 
 ment ago of finding in magic the key of all 
 secrets, was fast fading away. 
 
 I looked around in this home of the ma- 
 gician. On his writing-desk lay a parchment 
 on which he had commenced to write down 
 the horoscope of the following year. Be- 
 side the desk was a celestial globe with 
 figures painted in various colors. In a win- 
 dow looking towards the south hung an as- 
 trolabe, to whose alidade a long telescope (of 
 course without lenses) was attached. The 
 book -case contained a not inconsiderable 
 number of folios : Versio Yulgata, some vol- 
 umes of the fathers, Yirgil, Dionysius Are- 
 opagita, Ptolemy, the hymns of Orpheus, 
 Hermes Trismegistus, Jamblichus, Pliny's 
 Natural History, a large number of works 
 partly in Arabic upon astrology and alchemy, 
 also a few Hebrew manuscripts, and so on. 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. 109 
 
 These and other such things were to be 
 found in his observatory, which was also his 
 studio and sleeping-room. Next to the ob- 
 servatory was the alchemical laboratory with 
 a strangely appointed oven filled with sin- 
 gular instruments reminding me again of 
 Faust's complaint: — 
 
 3f)r Snftrmttente fretltcfj foottet mem, 
 2fttt 9iab mtb $ammcn, SSalj mtb 33iigcl. 
 3% ftaub am £l)or, iljr fotitct ©dpffet fern; 
 3inareuer53artift!rau§,bod)t)cbt3^mcI)t bte 9ticcjct. 
 
 While we lingered here our host informed 
 us that for the present he had suspended 
 his experiments in alchemy. He hoped to 
 find his quinta essentia by a shorter process 
 than the combination of substances and dis- 
 tillation, which had exhausted already so 
 many investigators and led so few to suc- 
 cess. He acknowledged that he had him- 
 self advanced no farther in the art of the 
 adepts than the extraction from ' ' philo- 
 sophic earth" mixed with "philosophic wa- 
 ter " of just so much, and no more, gold 
 than he had employed at the beginning of 
 
110 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 the experiment.* In spite of this, however, 
 he worked daily before his oven, melting and 
 purifying such metals as he needed for his 
 planet-medallions, amulets and magical rings, 
 and above all in preparing that effective alloy 
 which is called electrum. 
 
 From his laboratory our host conducted us 
 into two other apartments with arched ceil- 
 ings, forming a sort of museum of most ex- 
 traordinary curiosities, — skeletons and dried 
 limbs of various animals : fishes, birds, liz- 
 ards, frogs, snakes, etc.; herbs and differently 
 colored stones; whole and broken swords; 
 nails extracted from coffins and gallows ; 
 flasks containing I know not what, — all ar- 
 ranged in groups under the signs of the 
 different planets. We beheld before us the 
 wonderful and rich apparatus of practical 
 magic arranged according to rules of which 
 we were entirely ignorant, — rules which we 
 had vainly sought in all the treatises of 
 
 * This confession Cornelius Agrippa makes in his "Occult 
 Philosophy." Theophrastus Paracelsus and others were less 
 modest. 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. Ill 
 
 modern times upon the occult sciences of 
 the Middle Ages, rules which might per- 
 haps contain the simple principles underly- 
 ing their confusion. 
 
 Evening was drawing on. The sun was 
 sinking behind the western hills. It was 
 beginning to grow dark among the arches 
 where the great magician had imprisoned 
 himself among dead and withered relics, — ■ 
 fragments broken from the great and living 
 world without. We returned to his observ- 
 atory. He opened a window and contem- 
 plated with dreamy glances the stars which 
 were kindling one after another in the heav- 
 ens. The twilight is a favorable time for 
 conversation of the kind for which we had 
 been preparing ourselves. We were soon 
 settled in comfortable, roomy arm-chairs and 
 discoursing earnestly, — we, the man of the 
 fifteenth century, and the unborn souls of 
 the nineteenth, whom he had summoned that 
 he might look into the future, and who now 
 used him to look back into the past. He 
 spoke to us of his science 
 
112 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 "My knowledge is not of myself. Far, 
 far away behind these hills, behind the snowy 
 summits of the Alps, behind the mountains 
 of the ' farthest- dwelling Garamantes/ on 
 nameless heights which disappear among 
 the clouds, the temple of truth was built 
 long ago over the fountain from which 
 life flows. That this temple is demolished 
 we well know; only the first human pair 
 has wandered through its sacred halls. But 
 he who desires, who yearns and has pa- 
 tience, can sit down by the margin of the 
 stream of Time and grasp and draw ashore 
 some of the cedar-beams from the ruined 
 temple drifting upon the billows, and from 
 the form of the fragments may determine 
 the structure of the whole. All wisdom has 
 its roots in the past, and the farther we 
 penetrate antiquity, the richer the remains 
 we find of a highest human wisdom. What 
 is Albertus Magnus with his profound knowl- 
 edge in comparison with the angelic wisdom 
 of Dionysius Areopagita, and what is the 
 latter compared with that of the prophet 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. 113 
 
 who denounced his woes over Nineveh and 
 Babylon? And yet these divinely commis- 
 sioned men would gladly have been taught 
 by the seventy elders who were allowed with 
 Moses to approach the mountain where God 
 chose to reveal himself, there receiving the 
 mystic knowledge of the Cabala. On Sinai, 
 however, God's secret was veiled in clouds, 
 lightnings and terror; Moses himself was per- 
 mitted to see him only 'from behind/ — cl'd 
 not obtain a morning-knowledge (a knowl- 
 edge a priori, an analogy- seeking pupil of 
 Schelling would have called it), but an even- 
 ing-knowledge (knowledge a posteriori, he 
 would have added). The morning -knowl- 
 edge was shown only to the man of the 
 dawn of time and was extinguished at the 
 first sin. From that time every successive 
 generation has deteriorated from its prede- 
 cessor : 
 
 '"Aetas parentum, pejor avis, tulit 
 Xos nequiores, mox daturos 
 Progeniem vitiosiorem,'' 
 
 and with the darkness of sin reason is plunged 
 
 8 
 
114 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 into constantly blacker depths. The individ- 
 ual seeker after truth may gain enlighten- 
 ment, but for himself alone, not for hu- 
 manity. Therefore a magician confines the 
 wisdom he acquires to his own bosom, or 
 imparts it to a single pupil, or buries it 
 under obscure expressions which he commits 
 to parchment; but he neither can nor will 
 impart it without reserve to humanity whose 
 path appears to lead downward into a con- 
 stantly deeper night. 
 
 "Even the theologians speak of the pris- 
 tine wisdom, — the theologians with whom 
 we, who practice the occult science, agree far 
 more than the simple and suspicious among 
 them think. What remained, in the time of 
 Noah, of pristine wisdom was saved with 
 him in the ark. His first-born obtained as 
 his portion the fairest wisdom. Prophecy, 
 the Cabala, and the Gospel belong to the 
 sons of Shem, the Jews. But even Ham 
 and Japhet were not left destitute. It was 
 the priest of the sons of Ham that guarded 
 the secrets of Isis, — secrets before which even 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. 115 
 
 we Christians must bow in the dust; for the 
 Old Testament does not hesitate to exalt 
 the wisdom of the Egyptians and recognize 
 Moses as a pupil from their school. Hermes 
 Trismegistus was an Egyptian, and we ma- 
 gicians who know that he transmuted what- 
 ever he chose into gold and precious stones, 
 are not astonished when the apostle Paul 
 speaks of the treasures of Egypt, or at what 
 travellers relate of its pyramids and other 
 giant works, or when Pliny estimates the 
 number of its cities at twenty thousand, or 
 when Marcellinus is amazed at the immense 
 treasures which Cambyses carried away from 
 it, for all this was a creation of the art of 
 Hermes Trismegistus.* Even the portion of 
 the children of Japhet was not insignificant. 
 It was divided between the treasury of Zo- 
 roaster and that of the Eleusinian mysteries. 
 Some coins of this treasure fell into the 
 
 * Thus reasoned, as late as the middle of the sixteenth 
 century, Borrichius (Olaf Borch), who was professor in chemis- 
 try at the University of Copenhagen and wrote a book upon 
 the wisdom of the Egyptian Hermes. 
 
116 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 hands of Plato and Aristotle and have from 
 them come into the possession of Porphyrins, 
 Jamblichus, and the theosophists and scho- 
 lastics. It is this diffused illumination — that 
 of the Bible (its inner, secret meaning) the 
 Cabala and fragments of Egyptian, Persian 
 and Grecian wisdom — which are collected 
 and united in the magic of learning. These 
 are the ancestors of my science. Has it not 
 a pedigree more noble than that of any royal 
 family ? 
 
 "I heard you mention something about the 
 necessity for a science of investigation with- 
 out presupposition. Would you then really 
 presume to be the judge of all that past 
 generations have thought, believed and trans- 
 mitted as a sacred inheritance to those that 
 follow ? Do you not shrink before the idea 
 that human hunger for truth must have been 
 satisfied from Adam to our own days by 
 nothing but illusions ? that you are the chil- 
 dren and children's children of mere idiots 
 who have fixed their hopes, their faith, and 
 their convictions on baseless falsehoods? Put 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. 117 
 
 your godless plan of investigation to the test! 
 Do it openly, and the theologians will burn 
 you ! Do it in secret, and you will finally 
 crave the stake as a liberator from the ter- 
 rible void such a science would leave in your 
 own soul ! No, the magician believes just as 
 devoutly as the theologian. Only in the mel- 
 low twilight of faith can he undertake those 
 operations whose success is a confirmation of 
 the truth of his faith. Or do you require 
 stronger corroboration of the genuineness of 
 his tenets than what I find when I read in 
 these stars which wander silently past my 
 window, the fates of men, and see these fates 
 accomplished; when, with the potency of 
 magical means, I summon angels, and de- 
 mons, and the souls of dead and unborn men 
 to reveal themselves before my eyes, and 
 they appear ? 
 
 "I confess that our science, if it is looked 
 at only on the surface, resembles a variega- 
 ted carpet with artfully interwoven threads; 
 but as only a limited number of manipula- 
 tions is required to produce the most re- 
 
118 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 markable texture, so it is also but a few 
 simple thoughts which support all the doc- 
 trines and products of magic. 
 
 " That the universe is a triple harmony, 
 as the Godhead is a Trinity, you are aware. 
 We live in the elemental world ; over our 
 head the celestial space, with its various 
 spheres, revolves ; and above this, finally, 
 God is enthroned in the purely spiritual 
 world of ideas. The unhappy scientists of 
 your century have in their narrow prejudice 
 separated these worlds from one another (but 
 by crowding together the celestial and the 
 elementary). Your so-called students of na- 
 ture investigate only the elementary world, 
 and your so-called philosophers only the 
 ideal ; but the former with all their delving 
 in the various forms of matter, never reach 
 the realm of the spiritual, but are rather 
 led to disavow its existence ; and the latter 
 can never from the dim world of ideas sum- 
 mon up the concrete wealth of nature. In 
 vain your students of nature imagine that in 
 physiology, or your philosophers that in an- 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. 119 
 
 thropology, they shall find the transition 
 from one world to the other. "We magi- 
 cians, on the contrary, study these worlds 
 as a unit. We find them combined by 
 two mighty bonds : those of correspondence 
 and causality. All things in the elementary 
 world have their antitype in the celestial, 
 and all celestial things have their corre- 
 sponding ideas. These correspondences are 
 strung from above downwards as strings on 
 the harp of the universe, and on that harp 
 the causalities move up and down like the 
 fingers of a player. While your students of 
 nature seek the chains of causality in only 
 one direction, the horizontal, that which runs 
 through things on the same level, that which 
 connects things in one and the same elemen- 
 tary world ■ we, the students of magic, search 
 with still greater diligence those perpendicu- 
 lar chains of causality which run through and 
 combine corresponding objects in the three 
 worlds. Our manner of investigating this 
 perpendicular series resembles your method 
 of examining the horizontal but slightly, if 
 
120 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 at all. What unnecessary trouble your in- 
 duction causes you ! You wish to investigate 
 the nature of some manifestation of force, 
 for instance; you analyze it with great pains- 
 taking into different factors, you strive to 
 isolate each of these factors and to cause 
 them to act each its own part, to find out 
 what each has contributed to the common 
 expression of force. We meet with no such 
 hindrances. A secret tradition has presented 
 to us our perpendicular lines of causality 
 almost entire, and we are able to fill up the 
 lacunse of this tradition by an investigation 
 which is not impeded with any great diffi- 
 culties. This investigation relies on the re- 
 semblances of things, for this similarity is 
 derived from a correspondence, and causality 
 is interwoven with correspondence. Thus, 
 for instance, we judge from the resemblance 
 between the splendor of gold and that of the 
 sun that gold has its celestial correspondence 
 in that luminary, and sustains to it a causal 
 relation. Another example : the two-horned 
 beetle bears a causal relation to the moon, 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. 121 
 
 which at its increase and wane is also two- 
 horned; and if there were any doubt of this 
 intimate relation between them, it must van- 
 ish when we learn that the beetle hides its 
 eggs in the earth for the space of twenty- 
 eight days, or just so long time as is re- 
 quired for the moon to pass through the 
 Zodiac, but digs them up again on the twen- 
 ty-ninth, when the moon is in conjunction 
 with the Sun.* Do not smile at this method 
 of investigation ! Beware of repeating the 
 mistake which ' common sense ' is so prone 
 to make in seeing absurdities in truths which 
 happen to be beyond its horizon ? Our 
 method is founded on the idea that there 
 is nothing casual in nature. To be sure 
 we accept a divine arbitrament, but by no 
 means a natural fortuity. Not even the 
 slightest similarity between existing objects 
 is a meaningless accident ! Not even the 
 slightest stroke in the figures by which we 
 fix our words and thoughts in writing is 
 without deep significance. Every thing in 
 
 * Agrippa: "De Occulta Pliilosophia," 1. I., c. 24. 
 
122 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 the work of nature and of man lias its cause 
 and its effect. We can not make a gesture, 
 nor say a word, without imparting vibrations 
 to the whole universe, upward and down- 
 ward, — vibrations which may be strong or 
 feeble, perceptible or imperceptible. This 
 principle runs through the whole of our cos- 
 mical system, and this thought must be true 
 even for you analyzers. 
 
 "Before explaining more fully the magi- 
 cal use of our series of correspondence and 
 causality, I wish to show you a couple of 
 them. I shall choose the simplest, but at 
 the same time the most important. I com- 
 mence with 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. 
 
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124 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 "Here you see one of the nets which magic 
 has stretched from the Empyrean down into 
 the abyss. For each of the sacred numbers 
 there is a separate scale of the same kind: 
 'The universe/ says Pythagoras, 'is founded 
 upon numbers/ and Boethius asserts that 
 'Every thing created in the beginning of 
 time was formed according to the relations 
 of certain numbers, which were lying as 
 types in the mind of the Creator.' It is 
 consequently a settled fact with us that num- 
 bers contain greater and more effective forces 
 than material things; for the former are not 
 a mixture of substances, but may, as purely 
 formal entities, stand in immediate connec- 
 tion with the ideas of divine reason. This 
 is recognized also by the fathers : by Hie- 
 ronymus, Augustine, Ambrosius, Athanasius, 
 Bede, and others, and underlies these words 
 in the book of Revelation : ' Let him who 
 hath understanding count the number of the 
 beast.' Those varied and relatively discord- 
 ant objects which form a unity in the same 
 world, are arranged side by side in the 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. 125 
 
 scale; whereas those things which in different 
 groups or different worlds correspond to one 
 another, form the ascending and descending 
 series. 
 
 "Do not forget that correspondence also 
 implies reciprocal activity ! Thus, for in- 
 stance, the letter n in the holy name of G-od 
 indicates a power which is infused into the 
 successive orders of Seraphim, Cherubim and 
 Thrones, and which is imparted through them 
 to the constellations Leo and Sagittarius, and 
 to the two wandering luminaries Mars and 
 the Sun. These angels and stars all pour 
 down into the elementary world the abun- 
 dance of their power, which produces there 
 fire and heat, and the germs of animal or- 
 ganisms, and kindles in man reason and faith, 
 in order to meet finally in the lowest region, 
 its opposites : cold, destruction, irrationality, 
 unbelief, represented by the names of fallen 
 angel-princes. I will now show you another 
 table which is an introduction to the study 
 of Astrology and treats more in detail of cer- 
 tain parts of the preceding, showing how 
 
126 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 things in the elementary world and micro- 
 cosm are subject to the planets. In show- 
 ing this to you I will remind you of the 
 verse : 
 
 1 Astra regunt hominem; sed regit astra Deus.' 
 (Ike stars guide maw, but God guides the stars.) 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. 
 
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128 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 "The value of these, as of many other ta- 
 bles, will be clear to you when I now pro- 
 nounce the first practical principle of magic: — 
 
 11 As the Creator of the universe diffuses upon 
 us, by angels, stars, elements, animals, plants, 
 metals and stones, the powers of his omnipo- 
 tence, so also the magician, by collecting those 
 objects in the elemental world which bear a re- 
 lation of mutual activity to the same entity (an 
 angel or a planet) in the higher worlds, and by 
 combining their powers according to scientific 
 rides, and intensifying them by means of sacred 
 and religious ceremonies, is able to influence 
 this higher being and attract to himself its 
 powers. 
 
 ' ' This principle sufficiently explains why I 
 have collected around me all the strange 
 things you here see. Here, for instance, is 
 a plate of lead on which is engraved the 
 symbol of a planet ; and beside it a leaden 
 flask containing gall. If I now take a piece 
 of fine onyx marked with the same planet- 
 symbol, and this dried cypress-branch, and 
 add to them the skin of a snake and the 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. 129 
 
 feather of an owl, you will need but to look 
 into one of the tables given you to find that 
 I have only collected various things in the 
 elementary world which bear a relation of 
 mutual activity to Saturn ; and, if rightly 
 combined, can attract both the powers of 
 that planet, and of the angels with which it 
 is connected. 
 
 " The greatest effect of magic — at the same 
 time its triumph, and the criterion of its 
 truth — is a successful incantation. Shall we 
 perform one ? If we go through all the nec- 
 essary preparations, we shall have a bird's- 
 eye view of the whole secret science. Only 
 certain alchemists have a still greater end 
 in view ; they aspire to produce in the re- 
 tort man himself, — nay, the ' whole world. 
 You men of the nineteenth century know 
 only by reputation of our attempts to pro- 
 duce an homunculus, and a perpetuum mobile 
 naturce. Could you only count the drops of 
 perspiration these efforts have wrung from 
 us ! There is something enchanting, some- 
 thing overpowering, in alchemy. It is gigan- 
 
130 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 tie in its aims, and in its depths dwells a 
 thought which is terrible, because it threat- 
 ens to crush that very cosmic philosophy on 
 which our faith is founded. We occupy our- 
 selves with the elements, until the idea steals 
 upon us that every thing is dependent on 
 them ; that every thing, Creator and created, 
 is included in them ; that every thing arises 
 by necessity and passes away by necessity. 
 If you can only collect in the crucible those 
 elements and life-germs which were stirring 
 in chaos, then you can also produce, in 
 the crucible, the six days of creation, and 
 find the spirit which formed the universe. I 
 have abandoned alchemy only to escape this 
 thought; but a parchment will, sealed with 
 seven seals, and hidden in the most secret 
 corner of my vaults, contains the remarka- 
 ble experiences I have had when experiment- 
 ing for the perpetuum mobile and homunculus* 
 
 * We have found in a " Magia Divina" the following direc- 
 tions for accomplishing a perpetuum mobile naturce, the efficacy 
 of which we leave for the reader to decide. 
 
 "During the twelve nights after Christmas 1| measures of 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. 131 
 
 "But to the preparations for our con- 
 juration ! First we are met with the ques- 
 tion : Is the hour favorable ? Do the aspects 
 
 dew are collected from fruit-trees, and preserved well enclosed. 
 In the month of March dew is again collected from both fruit- 
 trees and meadows and is preserved in another phial. Dew 
 collected in May is poured in a third and rain of a thunder- 
 storm during the summer in a fourth. Thereupon the contents 
 of the four phials are mixed and one measure of it is poured into 
 a great transparent glass retort where, well covered, it must re- 
 main a month until it becomes foul. Put it then over fire and 
 subject to heat of the second degree. When sufficiently distilled 
 a substance thick as honey is left. In this residue are poured 
 four grains of astral tincture. The mixture is exposed to a heat 
 of the first degree, by which it is converted into a thick, jet- 
 black lump which again is dissolved, forming below an ink-like 
 fluid, and above a vapor, in which many colors and figures are 
 seen. These soon disappear, and every thing is changed into 
 water, which begins to turn green, and green palaces, constantly 
 enlarging, and mountains and lovely pastures appeiir, while the 
 water is diminished more and more. When now you find that 
 no more dew rises from the earth within the glass, take the 
 water which you received from the distillation, mix with it a 
 drachm of astral tincture and pour an ounce of this mixture 
 into the glass bulb. Then every thing begins again to live and 
 grow. Add every month an ounce of this mixture. If then the 
 glass ball is well closed, and is not stirred, a vapor gradually 
 arises, and is condensed into two shining stars, like the sun 
 and the moon, and like the latter, one of these stars waxes and 
 wanes ; and all the phenomena of nature, thunder, lightning, 
 hail, rain, snow and dew, will appear in your glass ball as in 
 
132 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 oppose ? Aspect is the relative position of 
 two planets to each other. Every calendar 
 from the centuries which lie between you 
 
 the real world around you. All this will happen if you keep 
 the great Creator before your eyes and in your heart, and if 
 you conceal from the wicked world this great secret." 
 
 From the second part of Goethe's Faust the reader may re- 
 member Doctor Wagner, Faust's former famul us, busily engaged 
 at the alchemic furnace in preparing a homunculus, an artificial 
 man. The same "Magia Divina" from which we have quoted 
 the preceding directions, allows us also to trace the secret of the 
 learned Wagner: the art of producing "homunculos philosophi- 
 cos." In a retort of the most beautiful crystal glass is poured 
 one measure of the purest May-dew, collected when the moon 
 is crescent, and two measures of blood from a youth, or three 
 measures from a girl. Both the boy and the girl must be 
 hale and, "if possible," chaste. When this mixture has fo- 
 mented during a month, and been transformed into a reddish 
 clay, the menstruum which is formed on the top is drawn off 
 by means of tubes hermetically attached to the retort, gathered 
 into a clean glass vessel, mixed with one drachm animal tinc- 
 ture, and the mixture is again poured into the retort where it is 
 kept during a month in gentle heat. A sort of bladder will have 
 then formed which is soon gradually covered with an organic 
 net of little veins and nerves. Sprinkled every fourth week 
 with the menstruum above quoted, the bladder grows during four 
 months. When now you notice a peeping sound and move- 
 ments of vitality in the glass, look into it and you will discover 
 to your joy and amazement a most beautiful pair, a boy and a 
 girl, which you can contemplate with heart-felt admiration for 
 this lovely work of nature, though their height is but six inches. 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. 133 
 
 and me speaks of these aspects : of the con- 
 junction of the planets (when they are on 
 the same meridian, and consequently sepa- 
 rated by no angular distance); their opposi- 
 tion (when in a directly opposite part of 
 the heavens); their quadrature (distance of 
 90°), trigon (120°), and hexagon (60°). If the 
 blood-red Mars, or the pale Saturn stand in 
 quadrature or in opposition to one another, 
 or to any of the other wandering stars, this 
 portends destruction. But to-day both these 
 planets are harmless ; the aspects are good, 
 
 They move and walk about in the glass, where in the midst 
 there is a tree growing with all kinds of pleasant fruits. If now 
 you pour into the retort every month, two grains of animal 
 tincture, you can keep them alive six whole years. When one 
 year old they can inform you of many secrets of nature. They 
 are benevolent in their disposition, and obey you in every thing. 
 But at the end of the sixth year you will find that this beau- 
 tiful pair who have eaten hitherto of all kinds of fruit, except 
 those growing on the tree which sprang up in the midst of the 
 retort, now begin to eat also the fruit of that. Then a vapor 
 is found in the retort, which grows denser, assumes a blood-red 
 color and emits flashes. The two homunculi are terrified, and 
 try to hide themselves. Finally every thing around them is 
 parched, they die, and the whole is changed into a fuming 
 mass. If the glass is not very large and strong it explodes, 
 causing great damage. 
 
134 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 and Mars itself being in the first ' face ' of 
 its own house,* is consequently even kindly 
 disposed. Even the moon, whose assistance is 
 
 * Every planet had among the twelve signs of the Zodiac its 
 own house, and it was especially propitious when in any of 
 those abodes. The following table shows the order: — 
 
 Saturn dwells in Capricornus. 
 
 Jupiter " " Pisces and Sagittarius. 
 
 Mars " " Aries and Scorpio. 
 
 The Sun " " Leo. 
 
 Venus " " Taurus and Ursa Major. 
 
 Mercurius " " Virgo and Gemini. 
 
 The Moon " " Cancer. 
 Each of the twelve signs (thirty degrees on the arc of the 
 heavens) was divided into three "faces" (ten degrees). The 
 position of the planet was most auspicious when in the first 
 face of the house; if in the third its favorable influence was 
 doubtful. 
 
 As the reader will see from the first table given above, the 
 signs of the Zodiac were supposed to sustain a relation to the 
 elements and to temperaments. Aries, Leo and Sagittarius 
 were warm, dry, fiery and choleric. Mars entering these signs 
 —excepting that of Aries which was his own house, in which 
 he was auspicious — must therefore bode draught, conflagration 
 and pestilence. Taurus, Virgo and Capricornus, were cold, dry, 
 earthy, melancholic. Saturn in the second sign of Taurus might 
 consequently betoken a severe winter. The signs of Cancer, 
 Scorpio and Pisces were cold, damp, watery and sanguine. The 
 dominion of the Zodiacal constellations over the human body 
 was divided as follows: Aries presided over the head and face, 
 Taurus over the neck and throat, Gemini over the shoulders, 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. 135 
 
 needed, is in the house of a friendly star, and 
 in a favorable quadrature to Jupiter. Here 
 we meet consequently with no hindrances. It 
 remains, however, on the side of Astrology 
 to find out what planets are the regents of 
 the present year. In other words, what 
 planets form the first aspect of the year. 
 Look here in my calendarium. Mars was 
 one of them. This suits us all the better 
 as to-day is Tuesday, Mars' own day, and 
 as the hour will soon be here which, on 
 this clay, he presides over absolutely.* It 
 
 arms and hands, Cancer over the breast, ribs, lungs and spleen, 
 Leo over the upper part of the stomach, back and side, Virgo 
 over the lower part of the stomach and intestines, Scorpio over 
 the generative organs, Sagittarius over the anus, Capricornus 
 over the 'knees, Aquarius over the thighs, Pisces over the feet. 
 The planets exercised the same influence as their houses, and all 
 elementary things subordinated to a planet were considered to 
 be, during auspicious aspects, excellent remedies for affections 
 in the limbs presided over by that planet. The series of analo- 
 gies, of which we have given an example above, were therefore 
 inexhaustible mines even for the physicians of the Middle Ages. 
 Since, for instance, Capricornus which presided over the knees, is 
 the house of Saturn, and all crawling animals are connected with 
 this planet, the fat of snakes is an effective remedy against gout 
 in the knees, especially on Saturday, the day of Saturn. 
 
 * The days bear yet, in many languages, the names of the 
 
138 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 is therefore of importance that we use in 
 our incantation the martial part of my magi- 
 cal apparatus. Among the elements fire is 
 
 planets which were assigned to them in gray antiquity by 
 Astrology. 
 
 Sunday, dies Solis, is the day of the Sun. 
 
 Monday, dies Luna?, is the day of the Moon. 
 
 Tuesday, dies Martis, is the day of Mars, i. e., Tiw. 
 
 Wednesday, dies Mercurii, is the day of Mercury. 
 
 Thursday, dies Jo vis, is the day of Jupiter, i. e., Thor. 
 
 Friday, dies Veneris, is the day of Venus, i. e., Freja. 
 
 Saturday, dies Saturni, is the day of Saturn. 
 The original names seem to have been introduced by the Ro- 
 mans during the later period of the republic. That the idea is 
 derived from Egypt is shown by a passage in Dion Cassius [1. 
 XLIIL, c. 26; compare E. Roth, " Geschichte userer abendland- 
 ischer Philosophic," I., pag. 211]. The question when and 
 how they were introduced by our forefathers will perhaps re- 
 main forever a matter only of conjecture. It has caused as- 
 tonishment that the order in which the days were named 
 after the planets, though the same with all nations, is not 
 the order in which they were supposed to be placed in the 
 universe (Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury and 
 the Moon). This riddle is solved by the passage in Dion Cassius 
 referred to, in a manner such that the astrological origin of this 
 nomenclature must be undoubted. He relates, namely, that the 
 Egyptians devoted every one of the twenty-four hours to a cer- 
 tain planet. The first hour of the first week-day (Saturday) was 
 given to the uppermost planet, Saturn, the second to Jupiter, 
 the third to Mars and so on, according to the order of the plan- 
 ets. The 24th hour of Saturday consequently fell also to Mars, 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. 137 
 
 martial. We shall therefore kindle a fire upon 
 this altar. Among the planets, the thorny, 
 poisonous and nettle-like are martial. We 
 shall therefore feed this fire with dry twigs 
 and rose-bushes. Among the animals the 
 ferocious and bold are connected with the 
 blood-red star. Here you see three belts of 
 lion's hide fringed with the teeth of tigers, 
 leopards and bears, and provided with clasps 
 of iron, because iron is the martial metal. 
 Let us fasten those belts, when the time 
 has arrived, about our waists. Among the 
 stones the diamond, amethyst, jasper and 
 magnet are martial. I show you here three 
 diadems which, though of pure iron, sparkle 
 
 and the first hour of the succeeding day to the Sun, by which 
 that day was therefore named Sunday. The 24th hour of Sun- 
 day falls according to the same calculation to Mercury, and the 
 first hour of Monday to the Moon; and so on. The astrological 
 distribution of the hours between the planets according to their 
 successive order in the heavens thus explains the apparent dis- 
 order which occurs in the week. In the magical works by Cor- 
 nelius Agrippa, Peter de Albano and others, of which the author 
 has availed himself, tables concerning the distribution of the 
 hours are found. These writers have collected from all quarters, 
 and not least from Ptolemy and the Alexandrians, materials for 
 their magical apparatus. 
 
138 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 with these stones, and are furnished with the 
 signs and signatures of our planet. Here 
 you have three iron staves marked with the 
 same signs : we must bear them in our hands. 
 These breast-plates studded with amethysts, 
 whose Hebrew inscriptions and characters re- 
 fer to the same stars, we must wear over our 
 hearts on the outside of the white clothing 
 which we shall put on before our incantation 
 begins. Here again you will notice three 
 diamond rings : we shall wear them on our 
 middle finger during the solemn and awful 
 moment for which we are preparing. These 
 two bells we place on the table; one of a red- 
 dish alloy and furnished with iron rings, sum- 
 mons the martial spirit hither, the other made 
 of electrum magicum (i. e., a proportional al- 
 loy of all metals with some astral tincture 
 added), serves to call celestial reserve-forces 
 of all kinds, if needed. Further, we require 
 these breast-plates and these rings of elec- 
 trum, which do not bear the name of any 
 planet, but the glorious and blessed name of 
 God himself, as a protection for the conjurers 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. 139 
 
 against the conjured spirit. Who he is we 
 shall soon find. Observe here, further, a ter- 
 rible arsenal which is also necessary for our 
 purpose. Mars is the star of war, murder 
 and passion. The demons of Mars have a 
 corresponding nature, and there exists be- 
 tween them and the tools by which their 
 work on earth is accomplished, a power 
 of attraction. Therefore we have here this 
 heavy sword with which the magic circle is 
 to be drawn ; we therefore place in rows 
 these skulls and bones which have been col- 
 lected in places of execution, these nails, ex- 
 tracted from gallows, these daggers, knives 
 and axes rusty with stains of blood. We 
 must not forget the incense which was kindled 
 on the altar shortly before the first citation. 
 There is a different kind of incense for every 
 planet and its demons. That appropriate for 
 Mars is composed of euphorbia, bdellium, am- 
 moniac, magnet, sulphur, brains of a raven, 
 human blood and the blood of a black cat.* 
 
 * The prescriptions for these perfumes are found in Cornelius 
 Agrippa ? s "Occulta Philosophia, " 1. I., c. 4A. 
 
140 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 It is highly important that the quality of 
 this incense should be genuine. I might 
 quote what Porphyrins says upon this point; 
 but confine myself to pointing out that it 
 has an influence on the conjurer as well as 
 upon surrounding objects. It saturates both 
 the air and the breast of the conjurer with 
 substances that are connected with the planet 
 and its demons. It draws down the conjured 
 being and intoxicates him, as it were, with 
 divine influences, which act on his mind 
 and imagination. As a matter of course we 
 must prepare besides, such implements as are 
 needed in every incantation without bearing 
 any relation to any certain planet. To them 
 belong amulets inscribed with the names of 
 seraphs, cherubs and thrones, and with sen- 
 tences from the Bible and the sacred books 
 of Zoroaster. To them belong further the 
 magical candlestick of electrum with seven 
 branches, every branch bearing the sign of 
 a planet ; and above all the pentagrams, 
 those figures with fine points which no de- 
 mon can overstep. We shall place the latter 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. 141 
 
 as a line of fortification around the magic 
 circle, and we must be sure that no one of 
 the points is broken. Inside the circle be- 
 tween the table, the seven-armed candlestick 
 and the incense-altar there is room for the 
 tripod with the bowl of holy water and the 
 sprinkler. 
 
 ''Having thus made the necessary prep- 
 arations for our feast, let us think of the 
 guest who is to be invited. 
 
 "The air of the evening is cool. I close 
 the window, move my study lamp to this 
 table, and ask you to be seated around it. 
 We must consult concerning the invitation, 
 in which we must follow the directions given 
 in this' cabalistic manuscript. 
 
 1 ' You have found from the table I first 
 showed you that it is the orders of Seraphim, 
 Cherubim and Thrones which are related by a 
 reciprocal activity to Mars. But these three 
 orders constitute the highest celestial hierar- 
 chy, which remain constantly in the presence 
 of Grod and must not be summoned hither 
 even if we were able to do so. We may only 
 
142 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 implore their assistance. The orders of Do- 
 minions, Powers and Empires are the only in- 
 telligences connected with the stars. Among 
 them we must address ourselves to the spirits 
 of Mars, since Mars is the regent of this year, 
 this day and of the intended incantation. 
 The choice between the good and the evil spir- 
 its ruled by Mars is still open ; but since it 
 is not our purpose to invoke by supplica- 
 tion but to compel by conjuration, we must 
 choose the wicked. This is no sin : it is only 
 danger. It gives joy to the good angels to 
 see the power of God's image over their ad- 
 versaries. But we can not force the whole 
 host of Mars' demons to appear in our circle. 
 We must select one only among their legion 
 and this one must be well chosen. It is 
 therefore necessary to know his name, for 
 with spirits, far more than men and terres- 
 trial things, the name implies the essence 
 and the qualities of the named. The Cabala 
 teaches us the infinite significance of words 
 and names. It proclaims and demonstrates 
 the mysteries which dwell in all the holy 
 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. 143 
 
 names of God ; it reveals to us the mysteries 
 in the appellations of angels ; it shows us 
 that even the names of men are intimately 
 related to the place in creation and the tem- 
 poral destiny of those who bear them. Even 
 names of material things show, though less 
 distinctly, a connection between the sound 
 and the thing itself or its nature. Who can 
 hear, for instance, the words wind, or swing, 
 without perceiving in the very sound some- 
 thing airy or oscillating ? Who can hear 
 stand, and strong, without perception of some- 
 thing stable and firm ? 
 
 ' ' Let us hasten to find the name of the 
 demon who is to be summoned. Astrology 
 as well as the Cabala gives various methods 
 for this purpose.* Let us choose the sim- 
 plest, which is perhaps also the most efficient. 
 
 "I must commence our work by point- 
 ing out the significance of number 72. To 
 this number correspond the seventy-two lan- 
 guages, the seventy-two elders of the syn- 
 
 * They are found in Agrippa's " Occulta Philosophia, " 1. III. 
 cc. 25, 26, 27, 28. 
 
14 i THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 agogue, the seventy- two interpreters of the 
 Old Testament and the seventy-two disciples 
 of our Lord. This number is also closely 
 connected with the sacred number twelve. 
 If the twelve signs of the Zodiac are divided 
 into six parts, we obtain the seventy-two so- 
 called celestial quinaries, into which the sev- 
 enty-two mystical names of God, his ' schem- 
 harrvphoras? infuse their power and which 
 are each of them presided over by an angel- 
 prince. The same number also corresponds 
 to the joints of the human frame; and there 
 are many other correspondences. 
 
 "Well, while the Cabalists were searching 
 out the sacred inner meaning of the Bible; 
 while they proceeded slowly, starting with the 
 'In the beginning/ and stopping at every 
 word, every letter, and found in every word 
 and every letter a mine of secrets,* they finally, 
 
 * Many pages could be filled with subtle speculations over 
 the word Bereshit, the first word in the Old Testament. That 
 the sensual world is only a secondary world, a reflex of the 
 ideal world, the Cabalists proved by showing that Holy Writ 
 commences not with the first but with the second letter of the 
 Alphabet, namely 3 (b), which in its form is half a square 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. 145 
 
 after the lapse of centuries, came as far as to 
 the 19th verse in the 14th chapter of Exodus, 
 commencing: 'And the angel of God, which 
 went before the camp of Israel arose.' 1 The 
 cabalistical rule which says wherever, in the 
 Bible, an angel is spoken of, there is also 
 the name of an angel hidden among the He- 
 brew letters of the verse, admonished them 
 to pause and consider. They had at first no 
 idea of the extraordinary discovery they were 
 now on the point of making. But their at- 
 tention was attracted by the fact that there 
 
 [found in. the number of the world], and therefore signifies an 
 accomplished separation between spirit and matter, between 
 good and evil. By a transposition of the letters in Bereshit, in 
 accordance with the method of the Cabala, two other words are 
 obtained which mean "in the first Tishri," showing that the 
 world had been created in the month of Tishri (September). 
 The sum of the numerical value of the letters in the word Be- 
 reshit equals the sum of the numerical value of the letters in two 
 words which mean "He created by the law,"— a proof that the 
 law is the instrumental cause of the world. Further, Bereshit can 
 be divided so as to form two words meaning "He created six" 
 (six days, six millenniums, the six extensions of universal space, 
 etc.); or, "He created a ram," which was, according to the He- 
 brew Cabalists, the same ram that was sacrificed instead of Isaac, 
 and the Christians add, the same "Lamb of God" which gave 
 itself a sacrifice for man. 
 10 
 
146 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 were seventy-two letters in the verse (in the 
 Hebrew text). Still more surprised were 
 they when they found that even the follow- 
 ing verse, the 20th, contained exactly sev- 
 enty-two letters; and then surprise grew into 
 awe when even the 21st verse showed the 
 same number. In the Bible there is no for- 
 tuity : a great secret was hidden here. Fi- 
 nally, by placing the three verses, letter by 
 letter (the middle verse written from left 
 to right, the others conversely), above one 
 another, G-od's seventy -two mystical names 
 ' schemhamphoras ; each consisting of three 
 letters, from the three verses, was discov- 
 ered. These names, provided with the suf- 
 fix el or jah, are also the names of the sev- 
 enty-two quinary angels, of which God has 
 said that his name is in them. 
 
 "Here in this cabalistic manuscript these 
 names are preserved. Let us select one of 
 them at random. My eye happens to fall 
 upon Mizrael first. We will take that. This 
 high name of an angel which we may not 
 invoke, will give us the key to the name of 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. 147 
 
 the demon which is to appear presently. 
 Here is the table that will help us. The 
 three root-consonants of the word Mizra(el) 
 correspond to three others in the planet Mars, 
 which contain the name — let us pronounce it 
 silently, let us merely whisper it, for it is the 
 name of the desired demon — Tekfael! * 
 
 "The sum of the numerical value of the 
 letters in this name is 488. A remarkable 
 number, every figure reminding us of the 
 mystical four, of the elements and of their 
 correspondences ! We shall commune with 
 one of the mightiest and most terrible among 
 the demons. On the waxen tablet with an 
 iron frame, I now inscribe the name of the 
 demon, adding the number 488, and these pe- 
 culiar strokes which make up his signature. 
 Time does not allow me to tell you now the 
 rules by which the signature is formed from 
 the name.f 
 
 * The table from which, the author has amused himself in ex- 
 tracting, according to the rules, this name, is found in "Oc- 
 culta Philosophia," 1. IIT. c. 26. 
 
 f Agrippa's book gives the subtle rules for finding the "signs" 
 or the signatures of the demons. — The reader must remember 
 
148 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 "The preparations are now completed, it 
 only remains to order the apparatus, and 
 to array ourselves. When we have put our 
 implements in order, consecrated the room, 
 cleansed ourselves by a bath, put on the 
 white robe, wrapped a red mantle around (for 
 red is the color of Mars), buckled the girdle of 
 Mars about our waists, assumed the diadem, 
 the breast-plates and the rings, I kindle on 
 the altar my magical light, and the fire for 
 incense, and draw the magical circle. Then 
 an intense prayer for the protection of God, 
 then the incantation. 
 
 "Here is the conjuration-book, the so-called 
 Conjurer of Hell. I open at the page on which 
 the martial incantations begin. The book 
 is placed within the circle. When needed, I 
 grasp it with the left hand; I hold the staff 
 with my right." 
 
 The Grothic room in which the incantation 
 was to take place, presented a strange and at 
 the same time solemn and awful aspect. The 
 
 the part played by the "signs" of microcosmos and the earth- 
 spirit in Goethe's Faust. 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. 149 
 
 magician had arranged with practiced hand 
 the things before mentioned. The skulls, the 
 bones of men and beasts, the murderous weap- 
 ons and the martial essence-flasks, the various 
 and indescribable fragments from all the king- 
 doms of nature formed, nearest to the walls, 
 different figures, triangles, squares and penta- 
 gons. Red drapery was hung over the naked 
 walls. In the midst of the room and inside 
 the circularly arranged pentagram were the 
 fire and incense-altar with holy water. On a 
 table in the rear, but partly within the circle, 
 the magical lights were burning, and diffused 
 an uncertain whitish - yellow light over the 
 objects. Near the candlestick were the two 
 bells. We were arrayed in our garments. 
 The face of my companion was pale as death: 
 probably mine also. 
 
 " Courage, fortitude! . . or you are 
 lost ! " whispered the magician, whose eye 
 beamed with a dark, solemn determination, 
 and whose every feature expressed at this 
 moment a terrible resolution. 
 
 These were his last words before the incan- 
 
150 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 tation. We were allowed to answer nothing. 
 I tried to be courageous, but my soul was sha- 
 ken by a dreadful expectation. The prayer 
 and religious ceremonies which we had per- 
 formed after the bath and change of dress, 
 had not diminished but only intensified this 
 feeling. 
 
 The night wind shook the windows hidden 
 behind the heavy draperies. It seemed as if 
 ghosts from another world had been lurking 
 behind the gently waving curtains. 
 
 Even the skulls appeared to me to bode 
 from their sunken, vacant eyes, the arrival 
 of something appalling. One of them at- 
 tracted my attention for a long time, or 
 rather exercised on me the same influence 
 which the eye of the rattle-snake is said to 
 have upon the bird which he approaches to 
 devour. I noticed in the eye a metallic lus- 
 tre. It was the gleam of the light reflected 
 from a martial stone fastened in the skull. 
 
 In the mean time the magician had seized 
 the blood-stained sword, and drew, murmur- 
 ing a prayer the while, a threefold magical 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. 151 
 
 circle around the pentagram. Between the 
 circumferences he wrote the names of the an- 
 gels of the year, the season, the clay and the 
 hour. Towards the east he made the sign 
 of Alpha, towards the west of Omega. Then 
 he divided the circle by a cross into four 
 fields. He assigned two of them, those be- 
 hind him, to me and my companions. They 
 were large enough to kneel upon. We were 
 strictly enjoined not to leave them, not to 
 allow even a fold of our mantles to wave 
 outside the circle. Forge tfulness in this re- 
 spect would cost us our lives. The magician 
 put aside his sword in a triangle outside of 
 the circle. He sprinkled himself and us with 
 holy water, read formularies over the incense 
 and the thorn twigs, and kindled them. This 
 was the sign for us to give ourselves to 
 prayer. We must not cease praying until 
 we had heard the first word of the incanta- 
 tion. The incense spread, as it were, a dim 
 transparent veil over the room. Here and 
 there it was condensed into strange figures : 
 now human, now fantastic animal shapes 
 
152 THE MAGIC OF THE _ MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 arose against the vaulted wall and sank 
 again. 
 
 There must have been something narcot- 
 ical in those vapory clouds. I looked at 
 them in a half dreaming state while my lips 
 repeated inaudibly the enjoined prayers. 
 
 I was aroused from this condition by the 
 first word of the incantation which struck my 
 soul like a thunder-bolt, and awakened me 
 to full consciousness of my position and of 
 the significance of the hour. The blood in 
 my veins seemed changed to ice. 
 
 The magician stood before me, tall, erect 
 and commanding. He had taken the incan- 
 tation-book and now read from it with a hol- 
 low voice the first citation, which begins with 
 a long formulary invoking the different mys- 
 tical names of G-od. 
 
 I can not repeat the quotation. The high- 
 est and the lowest, the divine and the infer- 
 nal, that for whose sacredness we feel an 
 irrepressible reverence and that for whose 
 impiety we experience the deepest horror, 
 were united here in the most solemn and the 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. 153 
 
 most terrible words that human tongue has 
 ever stammered. Now first I began to form 
 an idea of the power of words. 
 
 The name of the demon was not yet ut- 
 tered. The nearer the moment for its pro- 
 nunciation approached, the deeper became the 
 voice of the magician. Now came the for- 
 mula of invocation, and now — resounded the 
 name Tekfael. 
 
 It appeared as if a thousand-fold but whis- 
 pering echo from the vault above, from the 
 corners of the room, from all the skulls and 
 from the very incantation -book itself, re- 
 peated that name. 
 
 The magician became silent, the incense 
 was condensed and assumed a reddish tint 
 which gradually became more and more dif- 
 fused. We seemed to hear the thunder roll- 
 ing, at first from a distance, then nearer, 
 finally over our heads. It was as if the 
 tower had been shaken and the vault over 
 our heads been rent. My knees trembled. 
 Suddenly a flash of lightning shot through 
 the red mass. The magician extended his 
 
154 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 staff, as if lie had wished to stop it. He 
 raised his voice anew, strong and powerful 
 amidst the continued peals of thunder. The 
 smoke grew thin again ; from its wreaths 
 there appeared before the magician in the 
 immediate vicinity of the circle, and at the 
 opposite end of his staff, a dim apparition, a 
 figure whose first aspect bereft me of my 
 reason. I felt as if I had fallen to the floor, 
 ■ — as if I had been lost 
 
 I awakened with the perspiration of agony 
 on my forehead, but fortunately in my own 
 bed and in the nineteenth century. The 
 view from my window is cheerful and en- 
 livening. I see a river which bears proud 
 ships, quays swarming with men, and broad 
 streets with houses in a graceful and light 
 renaissance style. I lived again in the pres- 
 ent which pleased me the best, next to 
 dreaming of the future 
 
 They strove for something great, however, 
 those learned magicians of the Middle Ages. 
 Theirs was a mighty imaginative creation. 
 It lies in ruins never to arise again; but the 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. 155 
 
 crumbled debris testify to the belief in an 
 all-embracing human power and knowledge. 
 These learned magicians were likewise rest- 
 less Faust-natures, as distinct from the usual 
 type of the learned of their time as Faust from 
 the pedantic ^/oss-proud, unaspiring milk-sop 
 Wagner. "While they paid their tribute of 
 weakness to tradition, and formed their sys- 
 tem on received dicta, it was among them 
 that presentiments of the future began to 
 stir, and a longing for a clearer light than 
 that with which the scholastics and doctors 
 angelici et seraphici felt themselves well con- 
 tented. When the study of ancient Greece 
 was recommencing, when the dawn of the 
 renaissance appeared, it was these enthusi- 
 astic natures, still groping among the dreams 
 of magic art, that first began to awake and 
 think. It was a feeling of the insufficien- 
 cy of the ruling theology and scholasticism 
 which had driven them into the temple of 
 "secret philosophy.' ' Since its pillars were 
 brought from diverse spheres of culture, dis- 
 trust and fear of maoic had become more 
 
156 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 universal than directly ecclesiastical; they had 
 drunk as deeply from profane tradition as 
 from Christian, considering them both to flow 
 from the same divine source : their writers 
 quote Porphyrius by the side of John, and 
 the pretender Hermes by the side of Paul. 
 The courage with which they tried to burst 
 open the portals of the spirit -world served 
 them afterwards when from the shores of 
 their childhood's belief they were to venture 
 out on the ocean of thought. Campanella, 
 Yanini, Giordano Bruno, and Cardanus stand 
 on the dividing line between dogmatico-fan- 
 tastical magic and a philosophy in the sense 
 of the old Greeks and of modern times. If 
 already previously some magicians of the old 
 type had died from persecution, it was not 
 to be wondered at that such u atheists" as 
 Yanini and Bruno must now ascend the pile. 
 The occult sciences of the Middle Ages 
 with their origin not from paradise and 
 Noah's ark, as believed by their adherents, 
 but from an ancient Oriental culture and 
 with their power over even the strongest 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. 157 
 
 and most independent souls that could arise 
 under the influence of a Church which levels 
 all thought, may properly remind those who 
 are willing to forget it, of a sad but incon- 
 testable truth: That humanity may embrace 
 during the course of many and long centuries 
 with the most candid faith, and construct 
 with immense labor into a system, dogmas 
 which hare been received without question- 
 ing, and which contain more of the false than 
 of the true, the great antiquity of which does 
 not give them more claim for validity than is 
 possessed by the error which arose yesterday 
 and vanished to-day. No special divine in- 
 fluence has saved or will save the generations 
 from inheriting the errors less than the ac- 
 quired truths of their predecessors — no other 
 divine influence, I should say, than the im- 
 pulse we feel to think for ourselves in order 
 to attain to clearness. 
 
IV. 
 
 THE MAGIC OF THE PEOPLE AND THE STRUGGLE 
 OF THE CHURCH AGAINST IT. 
 
 Wherever religious thought divides the em- 
 pire of the world and humanity into two ab- 
 solutely opposed powers, a good and an evil, 
 there it also distinguishes two kinds of magic: 
 the divine and the infernal. So with the 
 Persians who knew a white and a black 
 magic. So also in the Middle Ages of 
 Christianity. The Greeks, on the contrary, 
 knew nothing of this distinction. The world 
 being to them a harmonious whole, both in 
 moral and physical respects, magic was with 
 them only a means of finding out and using 
 the secret powers in the harmonious cosmos; 
 and the wonder-worker who could not be 
 thought of as deriving his powers from an 
 evil source, was undoubtedly a favorite of 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE PEOPLE. 159 
 
 the gods and an equal with the heroes, not 
 unworthy of statues and temples, if he used 
 his art for the benefit of humanity. For the 
 rest, magical speculation was with the Greeks 
 more and more pushed aside by philosophy, 
 — by scepticism and rational investigation, 
 until on account of the nearer contact be- 
 tween Europe and Asia, after the death of 
 Alexander, it began again to exercise its in- 
 fluence, and finally celebrated its triumph in 
 that clualistic form of religion which by the 
 name of Christianity took possession of the 
 Occident. 
 
 The struggle which the spirit of oriental- 
 ism waged on its march through Europe, 
 first against the Hellenic paganism, and then 
 against the Christian paganism which had 
 penetrated into the Church itself, has been 
 briefly sketched above. When Christianity 
 had spread later among, the Germanic and 
 Slavic nations, there arose a new process of 
 attraction and repulsion between it and the 
 natural religions of the barbarians, the ele- 
 ments of which were partly blended with it 
 
160 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 and partly repelled by it. The gods were 
 transformed into devils, but their attributes 
 J and the festivities in their honor were trans- 
 ferred to the saints. Pope Gregory the Great 
 ordained that the pagan festivities should be 
 changed only gradually to Christian, and that 
 they were to be imitated in many respects.* 
 
 In the time of Boniface there were many 
 Christian priests in Germany who sacrificed to 
 Thor and baptized in the name of Jesus at 
 the same time. Of especial influence on the 
 rapid spread of Christianity was the maxim 
 of Gregory not to be particular in the choice 
 of proselytes, because hope was to be placed 
 in the better generations of the future. To 
 
 * Since they (the newly converted Anglo-Saxons) are accus- 
 tomed to slaughter many oxen and horses in their feasts to the 
 honor of the devils (their ancient gods) it is necessary to allow 
 this custom to remain, but based upon another principle. 
 Thus there must likewise be celebrated on the feast days of the 
 Church and of the Holy Martyrs whose relics are kept in the 
 churches built in heathen sacrificial groves, a perfectly similar 
 festival, by enclosing a place with green trees and preparing a 
 religious banquet. Still the animals must not be sacrificed to 
 Satan's honor, but slaughtered to the praise of God and for the 
 sake of food, for which the Giver of all good gifts must be 
 thanked. 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE PEOPLE. 161 
 
 be allowed to attend divine service, and to be 
 buried in the churchyard, it was only neces- 
 sary to have the benediction of the priest. 
 Gifts to the Church, pilgrimages, self-scourg- 
 ings, repeating of prayers in Latin, opened the 
 gates of heaven to the proselytes easier than 
 virtue and bravery those of Valhall to the 
 heathen. For the rest the pagan could enter 
 the community of the Church while retaining 
 his whole circle of ideas. The Church did not 
 deny, but it confirmed, the real existence of 
 every thing which had been the object of his 
 faith, but it treated these objects in accord- 
 ance with its dualistic scheme, sometimes ele- 
 vating them to the plane of sanctity, and 
 again degrading them to something diabolical. 
 Thus, for instance, it changed the elemen- 
 tary spirits — which the Celts and Germans 
 believed in — from good or morally indifferent 
 natural beings into fallen angels, envying man 
 his heavenly inheritance; and if a thinking 
 heathen could before accept or reject the ex- 
 istence of such beings at his pleasure, it now, 
 
 when he had become a proselyte, became a 
 11 
 
162 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 matter of eternal bliss to believe in them. 
 There was no superstitious idea gross enough 
 not to receive the signet of the Church; nay, 
 the grosser it was, the more likely was it to be 
 appropriated. Even so cultured an intellect as 
 Augustine, the most prominent of the fathers 
 and authors of his time, declared it to be "in- 
 solent " to doubt the existence of fauns, satyrs 
 and other demoniac beings which lie in wait 
 for women, have intercourse with them and 
 children by them.* Thus was laid the foun- 
 dation of that immense labyrinth of supersti- 
 tion in the darkness of which humanity has 
 groped during the thousand years of the Mid- 
 dle Ages. 
 
 In the rupture between the Church and the 
 natural religion of the northern peoples we 
 find, in a certain sense, the same spectacle 
 
 * " Oreberrima fama est multlque se expertos vel db eis qui experti 
 essent, de quorum fide dubitandum non est, audisse confirmant, sil- 
 vanos et faunos, quos incubos vocant, improbos scepe exstlUsse mu- 
 lieribus et earum appetisse ac peregisse concubitum, et quosdam 
 dcemones, quos Busios Galli nuncupant, heme assldue immunditiam 
 et tentare et efficere plures talesque asseverant, ut hoc negare impu- 
 dentlce videatur" (Do civitato Dei. lib. 15, cap. 23j. 
 
 t 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE PEOPLE. 163 
 
 repeated which we have seen in the struggle 
 between the Christian and the Greco-Roman 
 culture. If the Neoplatonieians held up their 
 Appolonius of Tyana as a type of the Chris- 
 tian sorcerers, Celts, Germans and Northmen 
 had also then soothsayers endowed with su- 
 pernatural powers whom the Christian mis- 
 sionaries must excel in the power of working 
 miracles, if they would gain consideration for 
 the new religion. There are many accounts 
 of bishops and priests who have worn gloves 
 of fire, walked on white-hot iron, and so forth, 
 before the eyes of the astonished heathen. 
 If the miracles worked by the apostles of 
 Christianity had their source in divine agen- 
 cies, then those performed by its opponents 
 must have their origin in the assistance of the 
 devil. Already here the white magic stood 
 opposed to the black magic, the immediate 
 and supernatural power of God in His agents 
 to the devil : and if the chief significance of 
 the Church was to be an institution for de- 
 liverance from the devil ; if all her magical 
 usages from the sacrament to the amulet 
 
164 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 were so many weapons against his attacks; 
 if the pagan religions which had succumbed 
 to Christianity were nothing but varied kinds 
 of the same devil-worship, and their priests, 
 seers and physicians but tools of Satan; then 
 it was natural for all traditions from the pagan 
 time which the Church had not transformed 
 and appropriated should be banished within 
 the pale of devil-worship, and partly also that 
 every act to which supernatural effects were 
 ascribed, , but which was not performed by a 
 Christian priest, or in the name of Jesus, should 
 be referred to a black magic, partly in fine that 
 the possibility of an immediate co-operation, 
 a conscious league between the devil and men 
 should be elevated to a dogma. 
 
 A struggle between good and evil, between 
 Glod and Satan, between church and pagan- 
 ism, which is carried on with the weapons of 
 miracles by two directly opposed human rep- 
 resentatives of these principles, was a theme 
 which must by necessity urge the power of 
 creative imagination into activity, and we find 
 also in one of the oldest monuments of Chris- 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE PEOPLE. 165 
 
 tian literature* a tale of this character. It 
 is Simon Peter, the rock on which the Church 
 is built, who fights there against Simon the 
 magician of Samaria, mentioned in the Acts. 
 When the cities of Asia Minor had witnessed 
 their emulation in miracle-working, the de- 
 cisive battle was fought out to the end in 
 Rome. In the presence of the assembled peo- 
 ple, Simon the magician attempts an ascen- 
 sion into heaven, but falls and breaks his 
 legs because Simon Peter had commanded 
 the evil spirits who were carrying the magi- 
 cian towards the sky to let him drop. This fa- 
 ble appears still further embellished in later 
 ecclesiastical authors. It is soon accompanied 
 by others, such as that of Cyprianus, Theoph- 
 ilus, Militaris, Heliodorus, and many others, 
 who from love of earthly glory abjure Christ 
 and enter into solemn covenants with the 
 devil. In the biography of the holy Basilius, 
 archbishop of Csesarea and Cappadocia (he 
 was- a contemporary of the apostate emperor 
 Julian), there is a story of a young man who 
 
 * " Recognition.es divi Clementis ad Jacob," lib. II. 
 
166 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 had obtained from a heathen sorcerer a let- 
 ter of recommendation to Satan. When the 
 young man, according to the precept of the 
 magician, had gone to a heathen grave and 
 there taken out the letter, he was suddenly 
 taken up and borne to the place where Satan, 
 surrounded by his angels, sat on a throne. 
 The youth abjured in writing his baptism and 
 swore allegiance to his new master. But 
 after some time the apostate repented and 
 confessed to the holy Basilius what he had 
 done. The bishop prayed for him forty days. 
 When at length the day had come that Satan 
 according to the compact should bear away 
 his victim, the bishop had the young man 
 placed in the midst of his congregation. Sa- 
 tan arrived: a battle between him and the 
 bishop followed — a battle which was carried 
 on with the j:>eople stretching forth their 
 hands imploring God for assistance, and was 
 ended when the compact fell from the claws 
 of the fiend, and was torn by the bishop. 
 The before-mentioned Theophilus had like- 
 wise pawned his soul to the devil, but the 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE PEOPLE. 167 
 
 contract was restored to him after urgent 
 supplication, by the holy Virgin, after which, 
 warned by his experience, he led a holy life, 
 and became Saint Theophilus before he closed 
 his eyes. These early legends of compacts 
 between the devil and men end, as we see, 
 with the sinner's salvation; not so the later. 
 If we now remember that it was one of 
 the dogmas proclaimed by the Church that 
 all magical and miraculous arts not per- 
 formed by the priests in the name of Jesus 
 were wrought by the devil; that he gives his 
 adherents power over nature and that the 
 demons as " inciibi 11 and " succubi" seek and 
 obtain carnal intercourse with human be- 
 ings,* we discover already in the ideas of 
 
 * This view is expressed already in Henoch's book and in 
 the writings of the Eabbi. Like them even the fathers in- 
 terpreted the "Sons of God" mentioned in Genesis who "were 
 fascinated by the daughters of men" as fallen angels. Thus 
 Cyrillus, Anthenagoras, Ireneeus, Lactantius, Turtullianus, and 
 others. We have just instanced above a quotation from Augus- 
 tine. The Greek mythology with its amours between gods 
 and men was destined to give support to this superstition. — 
 Luther, who could not free himself from the superstition of 
 his time, tells us often in his "Tischreden" that the devil 
 
108 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 the first Christian centuries the elements of 
 the sorcery of the Middle Ages. And when 
 Ave read further the accusations which the 
 first Christian sects hurled against one anoth- 
 er, — when we learn that the party which was 
 raised by the Council of Nice to the orthodox 
 position accused the Gnostics, Marcionites 
 and Arians of devil-worship, confederacy 
 with Satan and sorcery, we meet already 
 here that union of heresy and sorcery by 
 which the Church of the Middle Ages ac- 
 quired such a fearful weapon against dis- 
 senters, — a union which must not be looked 
 upon as a mere casual invention of wicked- 
 ness and theological hatred, but as the nec- 
 essary consequence of the whole dualistic 
 theory of morals, as the necessary fruit of 
 the belief in devils. 
 
 A long time must have been required for 
 the festivals common to the natural religions 
 
 can beget children by connection -with human beings. "Es 
 ist wahrlich ein gralilich, schrecldich Exempel," he says in 
 one place, "dass der Teufel kann die Leute plagen, dass er 
 audi kinder zeuget." 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE FEOTLE. 1G9 
 
 of Europe to become extinct or be remodelled 
 into Christian form. The external practices 
 by which religious ideas obtain a sensuous 
 expression, possess generally more tenacious 
 power of existence than the ideas themselves, 
 and continue in existence when these have 
 disappeared, as the shell after the death of 
 the nautilus. In certain religions of natural 
 development adoration of the sun and the 
 moon are the most important. Among the 
 Celtic, Germanic and Slavic tribes, as before 
 among Hebrews and Phoenicians, these di- 
 vinities of the light were adored by kindling 
 fires, by sacrifices and banquets on mountains 
 and in groves, especially at the time of the 
 vernal equinox (Easter), at the beginning of 
 May (Yalpurge's night), and on the night of 
 the summer solstice. From the fact that 
 traces of the custom still exist in our own 
 day, though its original significance is lost, 
 we can all the more safely assume that it con- 
 tinued to exist without interruption, openly 
 at first, then in secret, retaining its signifi- 
 cance, in spite of the efforts of spiritual and 
 
170 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 profane authorities to extirpate it, and as- 
 suming more and more in the popular mind 
 that character of devil-worship with which 
 the Church has branded these reminiscences, 
 from heathen times. And when finally it 
 ceased entirely, or was changed into seasons 
 of popular festivity which had no dangerous 
 suggestiveness even in the eyes of the Church, 
 still the remembrance of the demoniacal festi- 
 vals of mountain and grove must have been 
 inherited from generation to generation, and 
 then it was but another step to believe that 
 they still continued and were participated in 
 by persons who practiced magical arts, and 
 had been invested with the suspicious wisdom 
 of the ancient valas and druids — the female 
 seers and physicians of the pagans. That 
 the notion of the Witches' Sabbath, which 
 was celebrated on the night before the first 
 of May, and of the paschal journey of the 
 witches to Blokulla have this historical origin 
 is very probable. The ecclesiastical litera- 
 ture from the first half of the Middle Ages 
 does not leave us without significant hints ap- 
 
THE MAGIC OF TEE PEOPLE. 171 
 
 parently corroborating this opinion. St. Egid- 
 ius, who died in 659 a. d., speaks frequent- 
 ly against the Jire-worship, practiced during 
 midsummer nights, which as inherited from 
 pagan forefathers was accompanied with danc- 
 ing, and against the invocation of the sun 
 and moon (which he calls "the demons Her- 
 cules and Diana"), and against worshipping 
 in groves and by trees, springs and cross- 
 roads. The apostle of the Allemans, St. Fir- 
 minus, who died in 754 a. d., preaches against 
 the same customs, and especially dwells on 
 the pertinacity with which old women adhere 
 to the infernal festivals with their magical 
 songs and dances. Modern authors on the 
 subject in question speak of a synodal decree 
 which is said to date back to the council of 
 Ancyra in 314 a. d., and which enjoins the 
 bishops especially to watch the godless women 
 who, deceived by the delusions of the demons, 
 imagine that they traverse in the night, in the 
 company of Diana and Herodias and riding 
 on certain animals, wide tracts o-f country, 
 and are required to assemble for a certain 
 
172 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 number of nights by the command of their 
 mistress. But although this synodal decree 
 is spurious and belongs to a far later period 
 and a different locality (it is referred to for 
 the first time in the ninth century, in a work 
 composed by the Abbot Regino*), it is old 
 enough to deserve our attention here. To 
 the decree is appended a number of questions 
 which the bishops must put to such women in 
 confession. Among them are the following, 
 which connect immediately the witch-journey 
 with heathen traditions : — • 
 
 "Have you followed the practice inherited 
 from the heathen of considering the course 
 of the stars, the moon and the eclipses of 
 the new moon ? And have 3^011 imagined 
 that by the exclamation ' Conquer, moon r 
 (vince, Luna), you could reproduce its light ? 
 When you wished to pray, have you resorted 
 to other places than the church, as, for in- 
 stance, to springs, stones, trees or cross- 
 
 * Eeginonis libri duo de synodalibus causis et disciplinis 
 ecclesiasticis. The work was republished in Leipzig in the 
 year 1840. 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE FEOPLE. 173 
 
 roads ? Have you there kindled fires and 
 sacrificed bread or aught else ? ;; 
 
 John of Salisbury, who died a. d. 1182, 
 writes of women who, led by a " night- 
 queen," assemble .and celebrate banquets at 
 which they most relish children stolen from 
 their cradles. He still supposed that this 
 may not really be a fact, but only demoni- 
 acal illusions, phantasmagorial tricks played 
 by the devil, and empty dreams, especially 
 as such things happen among women, and 
 not among men, who possess a stronger rea- 
 son. The same view of the case is held by 
 William of Auvergne, bishop of Paris (died 
 a. D. 1248). But already during the life 
 of this prelate the belief in the reality of 
 witch-feasts was sanctioned by the author- 
 ity of Pope Gregory IX., and every doubt 
 in regard to it was declared to be heresy. 
 
 At the same time the connection between 
 heresy and witchcraft was revived and con- 
 firmed by the Church, so that all heretics 
 were to be considered as the sworn subjects 
 of the devil, and initiated into sorcery, even 
 
174 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 though not all sorcerers and witches were 
 necessarily heretics. The Church at this time 
 threatened by several newly arisen sects, had 
 recourse to every expedient to uphold its 
 hierarchy and the unity of confession. In 
 the year 1223 Gregory IX. promulgated a 
 letter which exhorted to a crusade against 
 the Stedinghs, a sect which had spread 
 themselves in Friesland and Lower Saxony. 
 He accused them of worshipping and having 
 secret communion with the prince of dark- 
 ness. According to the papal edict the Sted- 
 inghs considered the devil as the real and the 
 good deity, expelled by the other and the 
 evil from heaven, but returning thither in 
 the fulness of time, when the usurper on ac- 
 count of his extreme tyranny, cruelty and in- 
 justice had made himself hated by the race of 
 men and had finally become convinced of his 
 own incapability and powerlessness. In truth 
 if such a belief had sprung up it would not 
 have been strange. Everywhere the power 
 and the influence of the devil was seen, but 
 nowhere Grod's, if not in the bloody and ter- 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE PEOPLE. 175 
 
 rible laws and oppressive social system which 
 were declared by spiritual and profane au- 
 thorities to be divine. The very theory by 
 which the Church sought to save for God 
 his attribute of omnipotence — the theory of 
 consent, according to which the devil exer- 
 cises such power only by God's permission 
 — this very theory was suited to augment 
 the confusion and the terror. "Never," says 
 Bunsen,* "has there been a time when a 
 divine and universal government was so 
 much despaired of as in the Middle Ages." 
 Bunsen inclines to the view of the French 
 historian Michelet, that from the thirteenth 
 to the fifteenth century, after the Waldenses 
 and Albigenses in France had been extermi- 
 nated by Romish persecution, and the lower 
 classes had been reduced to serfs, a religion 
 of despair, a real Satanic cultus sprang up, 
 and that the Witches' Sabbath was in fact 
 founded upon nightly congregations, in which 
 thousands of brutalized men driven by misery 
 and oppression gathered themselves together 
 
 * "Gott in der Geschichte ," HI. 
 
176 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 in order to worship the devil and invoke his 
 aid. But there exists no absolutely certain 
 historical fact to prove that such meetings 
 have really taken place. We consider it 
 more probable, as pointed out above, that 
 the Witches' Sabbath was as it were the 
 lingering twilight, constantly deepening, and 
 constantly painted in more monstrous colors, 
 after the day of the degraded festivals in 
 the religion of nature, — an incubus of imagi- 
 nation which oppressed the bosom of hu- 
 manity buried in a world of dreams ; and 
 that nothing more than the belief in its 
 reality, which the Church sanctioned, was 
 necessary to produce the phenomena we de- 
 scribe. The Waldenses and the Albigenses 
 were treated like the Stedinghs. " Let the 
 judges know," writes an inquisitor, "that the 
 sorcerers, the witches and the devil-workers 
 are almost all Waldenses. The Waldenses 
 are by profession, essentially and formally, 
 devil- workers; and though not all conjurers, 
 still conjuration and Waldenseism have much 
 in common." The highest authorities of the 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE PEOPLE. 177 
 
 Church constantly nourished that awe of the 
 devil and his tools which filled the mind, 
 and they could do it without scruple, being 
 themselves seized by the same terror. Thus 
 John XXII. promulgated, a. d. 1303, two let- 
 ters, in which he complains that he himself, 
 not less than countless numbers of his sheep, 
 was in danger of his life by the arts of sor- 
 cerers who could send devils into mirrors 
 and rings, and make away with men by 
 their words alone. He mentions especially 
 that his enemies have sought to kill him by 
 piercing dolls which they had baptized with 
 his name by needles, invoking the aid of 
 the devil. It is needless to point out what 
 influence such proclamations from Christ's 
 vicar, the infallible head of the Church, would 
 exercise over the common mind. The dual- 
 istic philosophy ripened more and more until 
 that terrible crisis which broke out in the 
 fifteenth century. That crisis was preceded 
 by the trial of the Templars and by several 
 great but local witch -processes, with subse- 
 quent executions, until finally, Dec. 5th, 1484, 
 
 19 
 
I 
 
 178 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 the bull of Pope Innocent VIII. , "Ad fortu- 
 ran rei memoriam," appeared. This bull with 
 its companion, the "Witch-hammer" (Malleus 
 Malificarum), composed by the monk and in- 
 quisitor Sprenger, brought the evil to its 
 climax. Hell was no longer a mere product 
 of the imagination: we see it established on 
 earth in dread reality and stretching its do- 
 minion over all Christendom. 
 
 Our space does not allow us to reproduce 
 in a literal translation this bull of Pope Inno- 
 cent, written in barbarous Latin worthy of 
 its subject.* We must, however, give some 
 account of its contents. "The serf of God's 
 serfs " begins by testifying the care which 
 as the guardian of souls he must exercise in 
 promoting the growth of the Catholic faith 
 and driving the infamy of heresy far from 
 the proximity of the faithful. "But," he 
 continues, "it is not without profound grief 
 that I have learned recently that persons of 
 both sexes, forgetting their own eternal wel- 
 
 * It is found complete in its original form in Horst's 6l De- 
 monomagie," II. 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE PEOPLE. 179 
 
 fare and erring from the Catholic faith, mix 
 / with devils, with incubi and succubi, and in- 
 jure by witch songs, conjurations and other 
 shameful practices, revelries, and crimes, the 
 unborn children of women, the young of ani- 
 mals, the harvests of the fields, the grapes of 
 the vineyards and the fruit of the trees; that 
 they also destroy, suffocate and annihilate 
 men, women, sheep and cattle, vineyards, 
 orchards, meadows, and the like ; visit men, 
 women, cattle and other animals with inter- 
 nal and external pains and sickness ; prevent 
 men from procreation and women from con- 
 ception, and render them entirely unfit for 
 their mutual duties, and cause them to re- 
 cant, besides, with sacrilegious lips, the very 
 faith which they have received in baptism." 
 . . The pope therefore appoints his beloved 
 sons, the professors of theology Henry In- 
 stitor and Jacob Sprenger, to be prime in- 
 quisitors with absolute power over all dis- 
 tricts which are contaminated with those 
 diseases ; and since he knows that there are 
 persons who are not ashamed to insist upon 
 
180 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 their perverse assertion that such crimes are 
 only imaginary, and should not be punished, 
 he threatens them, whatever be their position 
 or dignity, with the severest punishments, in 
 case they dare to counteract in any way the 
 inquisitors, or interfere in behalf of the ac- 
 cused. Finally, he proclaims that no appeal 
 from the tribunals of the inquisitors to other 
 courts, not even to the pope himself, will 
 be allowed. The inquisitors and their assist- 
 ants are invested with unlimited power over 
 life and death, and are exhorted to fulfil 
 their commission with zeal and severity. 
 
 The bull contains no further indications as 
 to how the judges should proceed in the trial 
 of witches. The " Witch-hammer ' ; was al- 
 lowed to establish its own norm of procedure. 
 It is of importance here to give a resume of 
 the contents of this book, since it became a 
 juridical authority which was followed in all 
 countries, even in the Protestant, until after 
 the beginning of the eighteenth century. 
 The spirit of the time can not be better char- 
 acterized than by this book; in no clearer or 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE PEOPLE. 181 
 
 more tangible way can it be shown whither 
 supernatural ideas in cosmic philosophy will 
 lead, and how they finally will destroy rea- 
 son, morality, human feeling, and change the 
 world into a mad-house. 
 
 The book to which the bull of Pope Inno- 
 cent and a diploma from the emperor Max- 
 imilian serve as a commendatory introduc- 
 tion, begins with an apology intended to 
 show that its author does not introduce any 
 thing novel and untried, but that its theo- 
 ries are entirely founded upon the Scriptures. 
 To prove this he quotes passages from the 
 Old and New Testaments, from the fathers, 
 the decrees of the councils, the canonical let- 
 ters, from the writings of Thomas Aquinas, 
 Damianus and others. The devil, says the 
 "Witch-hammer," has no power indeed to 
 suspend natural laws, but the Bible shows 
 incontestably that God has vouchsafed him 
 a wide dominion over the natural powers 
 of corporeal things. Witness only the his- 
 tory of Job, and the temptation of Jesus 
 in the desert. Further, the existence of the 
 
182 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 many demoniacs spoken of in the New Tes- 
 tament proves that Satan can dwell in man 
 and use the human body as his implement. 
 "But," says the "Witch-hammer," constantly 
 aiming to deduce all its conclusions ostensi- 
 bly according to logic, "there must be no 
 confusion between demoniacs and witches. 
 The existence of the former does not prove 
 the existence of the latter ; this must be 
 demonstrated in a different way. And this 
 is the proof: The devil as a spiritual being 
 is not capable of a real corporeal contact. 
 He must therefore make use of an instru- 
 ment to which he imparts his power ; for 
 every bodily effect is produced by contact. 
 These instruments are the sorcerers and the 
 witches. It being then incontestable on the 
 one side that the power of the devil is 
 great, and on the other that he can ac- 
 complish nothing without the aid of sorcer- 
 ers and witches, the necessary conclusion is 
 that these must exist. This conclusion is 
 for the rest most decisively confirmed by 
 the Bible. Moses ordains that witches should 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE PEOPLE. 183 
 
 be put to death, a command which would be 
 entirely superfluous if witches had not ex- 
 isted. He who asserts that there are no 
 witches must therefore rightly be accounted 
 a heretic." 
 
 The "Witch-hammer" then broaches the 
 question, why it is that women are especially 
 addicted to sorcery, and answers it as fol- 
 lows : The holy fathers have often said that 
 there are three things which have no mod- 
 eration in good or evil: the tongue, a priest, 
 and a woman. Concerning woman this is 
 evident. All ages have made complaints 
 against her. The wise Solomon, who was 
 himself tempted to idolatry by women, has 
 often in his writings given the feminine sex 
 a sacl, but true, testimonial ; and the holy 
 Chrysostom says: " What is woman but an 
 enemy of friendship, an unavoidable punish- 
 ment, a necessary coil, a natural tempta- 
 tion, a desirable affliction, a constantly flow- 
 ing source of tears, a wicked work of nature 
 covered with a shining varnish ? " Already 
 had the first woman entered into a sort of 
 
184 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 compact with the devil; should not then her 
 daughters do it also ? The very word femina 
 (woman) means one wanting in faith ; for fe 
 means "faith," and minus "less."* Since 
 she was formed of a crooked rib, her entire 
 spiritual nature has been distorted and in- 
 clined more towards sin than virtue. If we 
 here compare the words of Seneca, "Wo- 
 man either loves or hates ; there is no third 
 possibility," it is easy to see that when she 
 does not love God she must resort to the 
 opposite extreme and hate him. It is thus 
 clear why women especially are addicted to 
 the practice of sorcery. f 
 
 It might now be asked: How is it possible 
 that God permits sorcery ? The ' ' Witch-ham- 
 mer ' 7 answers that God has allowed, without 
 
 * Many etymologies as profound occur in the " Witch -ham- 
 mer." The word diabolus (devil) is derived from duo, "two," 
 and bolus, "morsel," which is thus explained, that the devil 
 fishes at the same time after two morsels, the soul and the 
 body. 
 
 f This deduction, replete with indecencies which can not be 
 handled, occupies thirty-three pages of the "Witch-hammer." 
 It pretends to be very convincing. It has also sent women by 
 hundreds of thousands to death. 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE PEOPLE. 185 
 
 any detriment to his perfections, the fall of 
 angels and of our first parents ; and as he 
 formerly sanctioned persecutions against the 
 Christians, that the glory of the martyr might 
 be increased, so he also now permits sorcery 
 that the faith of the just may be the more 
 manifest. 
 
 The crime of the witches exceeds all other. 
 They unite in one person the heretic, the 
 apostate, and the murderer. The "Witch- 
 hammer " proves that they are worse than 
 the devil himself, for he has fallen once for 
 all, and Christ has not suffered for him. The 
 devil sins therefore only against the Creator, 
 but the witch both against the Creator and 
 the Redeemer. 
 
 It is with these and similar questions that 
 the first part of the " Witch -hammer " is 
 occupied. The second part, describing the 
 various kinds and effects of witchcraft and 
 the celebration of the Witches 7 Sabbath is 
 prefaced with an account of the power of 
 witches. They produce hail, thunder and 
 storms whenever they wish; they fly through 
 
186 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 the air from one place to another; they can 
 make themselves insensible on the rack; they 
 often subdue the judge's mind by charms, and 
 confuse him through compassion; they deprive 
 men and animals of reproductive power; they 
 can see the absent, and predict coining events; 
 they can fill, at their pleasure, human hearts 
 with relentless hatred and passionate love ; 
 they destroy the foetus in the womb, cause 
 miscarriages, change themselves and others 
 into cats and were-wolfs; nay, they are able 
 to enchant and kill men and beasts by their 
 very looks. Their strongest passion is to 
 eat the flesh of children; still they eat only 
 unchristened children: if at any time a bap- 
 tized child is taken by them, it happens by 
 special divine concession. 
 
 Their compact with the devil is of two 
 kinds: either a solemn one entered into with 
 all formalities, or a mere private contract. 
 The former is concluded as follows : The 
 witches assemble upon a clay set apart by the 
 devil. He appears in the assembly, exhorts 
 them to faithfulness, and promises them glory, 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE PEOPLE. 187 
 
 happiness and long life, and orders the older 
 witches to introduce the novices whom he 
 puts to the test and causes to take the oath 
 of allegiance; whereupon he teaches them to 
 prepare from the limbs of new-born babes 
 witch-potions and witch-salves, and presents 
 them with a powder, instructing them how it 
 is to be used to the injury of men and beasts.* 
 When then the novice has renewed the cere- 
 mony of allegiance on the next Witch Sabbath 
 she is a genuine witch. The children needed 
 for the witches' kettles and the sabbath ban- 
 
 * To give the reader a clearer idea of the really diabolical 
 "blindness and brutality which characterizes the terrible book we 
 are giving an account of, we quote the following statement from 
 the "Witch-hammer," p. 223: "We (the inquisitors Sprengerand 
 his colleagues) find that of all women that we have condemned 
 to the flames very few have voluntarily done harm by sorcery. 
 They have generally been forced by the devil to do it. After 
 having confessed every thing (on the rack) they generally at- 
 tempt suicide before being taken to the stake. It is the devil 
 who tempts them thus, for he is afraid that by repentance and 
 confession they will receive the pardon of God. If this wily 
 trick is not successful, and if they are prevented from destroy- 
 ing themselves, he knows how to rob them of the chance of 
 grace by other means, namely, by smiting them with fury, mad- 
 ness or sudden death ! " — Behold a sample of how theological 
 arguments founded on superior natural influences can be used ! 
 
188 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 quets are obtained as follows: The victims are 
 killed by looks or by the above-mentioned 
 powder, when they lie in their cradle or in 
 bed with their mothers. Simple people will 
 then believe that they have died from some 
 natural cause, — from sickness or suffocation. 
 Then when buried the witches steal them 
 from the grave. It has happened that judges 
 have opened, after similar confessions, the 
 grave and found the child in it; but in such 
 cases the judge must consider that the devil 
 is a great taskmaster who may have cheated 
 the eyes of the servants of justice, in order to 
 protect his servants, and in such a case the 
 confession of the witch (forced from her by 
 torture) should prove more than the easily 
 deluded vision of the judge. [What a tri- 
 umph of supernaturalistic argumentation !] 
 
 The witch accomplishes her aerial voyages, 
 says the "Witch-hammer," by smearing a 
 vessel, a broom and a rake, a broomstick and 
 a piece of linen, with the witch-salve; then 
 rising she moves forth through the air, visible 
 or invisible, according to her choice. The 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE PEOPLE. 189 
 
 "Witch-hammer" reminds those who doubt 
 these air- voyages, of Matt. iv. 5, where it is 
 related how the devil carried Jesus up through 
 the air to the pinnacle of the temple. 
 
 We now proceed to the third part of the 
 "Witch-hammer,' 7 the criminal law of the 
 witch-courts, which gives instructions how 
 " sorcerers, witches and heretics are to be 
 tried before spiritual as well as civil tribunals." 
 
 In regard to preliminary forms of pro- 
 cedure, the " Witch -hammer " lays down 
 first, "That the trial may commence with- 
 out any previous accusation, and on the 
 strength of a simple report that witches are 
 found somewhere ; for it is the duty of the 
 judge in a case fraught with many dangers 
 to the soul, not to wait for an informer or 
 accuser, but, ex officio, to institute immediate 
 inquiry." When an inquisitor comes to a 
 city or a village, he must exhort every body 
 by means of proclamations nailed to the 
 doors of churches and town-halls, and by 
 threats of excommunication and punishment, 
 to give information of all persons in any way 
 
190 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 suspected of the least connection with the 
 practice of witchcraft, or otherwise of bad 
 repute. The informers may be rewarded if 
 the inquisitor thinks it well, by the blessing 
 of the Church, and with money. A box to 
 receive the statements of such informers as 
 wish to be unknown should be placed in the 
 Church. 
 
 Two or three witnesses are sufficient to 
 prove guilt. In case so many do not present 
 themselves, then the judge may take means 
 to find and summon them, and force them 
 to tell the truth under oath. He has also 
 the right to examine witnesses previous to 
 the actual trial. As for the qualifications 
 necessary to appear as witnesses, the "Witch- 
 hammer 77 declares that the excommunicate, 
 accomplices, outlawed, runaway and disso- 
 lute women are irreproachable witnesses in 
 cases where the faith is involved. A witch 
 is allowed to testify against a witch, wife 
 against husband, husband against wife, chil- 
 dren against parents and so on, but if the 
 testimonies of accomplices or relatives are 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE PEOPLE. 191 
 
 to the advantage of the accused, then they 
 are of no validity; for blood is of course thicker 
 them water , and one raven does not willingly 
 pick out the eyes of another. 
 
 The "Witch-hammer" allows an accused 
 to have an advocate, but adds: "If the coun- 
 sellor defends his suspected client too warmly, 
 it is right and reasonable that he should be 
 considered as far more criminal than the sor- 
 cerer or the witch herself; that is to say, as the 
 protector of witches and heretics, he is more 
 dangerous than the sorcerer. He should be 
 looked upon with suspicion in the same de- 
 gree as he makes a zealous defence." But a 
 trial may be difficult enough without being 
 clogged and hampered by a cunning advo- 
 cate. In order to confuse such a one and 
 ensnare the accused, it is necessary, says the 
 "Witch-hammer," that a judge should re- 
 member the words of the apostle, u Being 
 crafty I caught you with guile" and show him- 
 self crafty. The "Witch-hammer" informs 
 the judge of five " honest and apostolical 
 tricks " (these are the very words of the 
 
192 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 book); one of them consists in embodying in 
 the copy of the proceedings which is given 
 to the defending lawyer, a number of facts 
 that have not occurred in the trial, and in 
 mixing the names of the witnesses. " By 
 that means the accused and their lawyer 
 may be so confused that they nowise know 
 who has said any thing, or what has been 
 said." 
 
 Among the questions to be put to a per- 
 son under accusation, the "Witch-hammer" 
 recommends a number, the quality of which 
 may be appreciated by reading the following 
 examples: "Do you know that people hold 
 you to be a witch ? "Why have you been 
 observed upon the precincts of N. N".? Why 
 have you touched JST. JST.'s child (or cow)? 
 How did it happen that the child (or the 
 cow) soon after fell sick ? What was your 
 business outside of your house when the 
 storm broke forth? How can you explain 
 that your cow yields three times as much 
 milk as the cows of others ? " 
 
 Sprenger's work gives a detailed account of 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE PEOPLE. 193 
 
 the treatment to which a person who is ac- 
 cused of sorcery and handed over to the 
 judge must be subjected. Before the trial 
 the accused must be put on the rack in order 
 that his mind may be inclined to confession. 
 Some, rather than confess their guilt, allow 
 themselves to be torn asunder limb by limb; 
 they are ".the worst witches," and their en- 
 durance is explained by the supposition "that 
 the devil hardens them against their tortures.' 7 
 Others who have been less faithful to him he 
 abandons, and are thus easily induced to con- 
 fess. "If no confession has been wrung from 
 the witch during the first clay" — we quote 
 the "Witch-hammer" literally — "the torture 
 is to be continued the second and the third 
 day. The civil law forbids, to be sure, to re- 
 peat the torture, when no proof has been ad- 
 duced, but it may be continued" 
 
 The judge should therefore use the follow- 
 ing formula: "We ordain that the torture 
 shall be continued (not repeated) to-morrow." 
 
 The second clay the instruments of torture 
 are to be exhibited to the accused, and an at- 
 
 13 
 
194 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 tending priest shall read the following adju- 
 ration: " I adjure thee, N". N., in the name of 
 the Holy Trinity, by the bitter tears of Jesus 
 Christ which he shed upon the cross 
 by the tears of God's saints and elect which 
 they have shed over the world . . that, 
 if thou art innocent, thou pour forth im- 
 mediately abundant tears; but, if thou art 
 guilty, no tears at all. In the name of God 
 our Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. 
 Amen.' 7 
 
 The person thus adjured seldom weeps. 
 But if this should occur, the judge should 
 see that it be not saliva or some other fluid 
 that moistens the eye of the witch. The 
 witch must be led into the court-room back- 
 wards, that the judge may see her before she 
 sees him. Otherwise she may enchant him 
 and move him to criminal compassion. « 
 
 Before the examination of witnesses, the ac- 
 cused must be stripped of all her clothing and 
 have all the hair on her body shaved off, and 
 her limbs must be carefully examined to as- 
 certain if they bear marks, for the devil 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE PEOPLE. 195 
 
 marks his own. It must be further ascer- 
 tained by pricking with a needle if any part 
 of the body is devoid of feeling, for that is a 
 sure sign of a witch. Still the absence of 
 such a sign nowise proves innocence. 
 
 If the witch can not be made to confess by 
 any means, then the judge must send her to 
 a distant prison. The janitor, some friend 
 and chaste women are to be persuaded to 
 visit the prisoner, and promise to help her to 
 escape, if she will only inform them of some 
 of her arts. In this way, remarks the author 
 of the "Witch -hammer, " many a one has 
 been ensnared by us. 
 
 We conclude here our account of Spren- 
 ger's dreadful book. The reader has contem- 
 plated sufficiently this fruit on the tree of the 
 devil. — It may fill us with loathing to con- 
 sider it, but its teachings are instructive. 
 May we know the tree from the fruit, and 
 may we tear it up with its roots — with those 
 roots yet so abundantly watered by men who 
 know not what they are doing. The fires 
 which the bull of Pope Innocent kindled all 
 
196 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 over Europe, threw their weird light far into 
 the times which have been called the modern, 
 — far in the eighteenth century. To count 
 these victims of the stake would be impossi- 
 ble. It is, however, sometimes attempted in 
 our days; archives are searched through and 
 discoveries are made which surpass every an- 
 ticipation. The victims amount to millions. 
 No age was spared. Children were brought 
 to the stake with their mothers. A silent, 
 gloomy presentiment seized every community 
 when the proclamation on the church doors 
 announced that the inquisitor had arrived. 
 All work in the shops and fields ceased, and 
 all the evil passions flared up into greater 
 activity. He who had an open enemy, or 
 suspected secret envy, knew beforehand that 
 he was lost. It was considered better to 
 anticipate than to be anticipated in denounc- 
 ing; and the tribunal had hardly commenced" 
 its activity, ere it was overcrowded with in- 
 formers. "When they had commenced in 
 one place to burn witches, 77 says an author 
 of the seventeenth century, "more were found 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE TEOFLE. 197 
 
 in proportion as they were burned." In va- 
 rious communities in Germany and France all 
 the women were sent to the stake. In many 
 instances it went so far that princes and po- 
 tentates were forced, from fear of seeing their 
 subjects exterminated, to stay by authorita- 
 tive command the madness of the inquisitors. 
 Greed brought fuel to the flames which super- 
 stition and hatred kindled. We will quote 
 but one example from the history of the 
 Scotch witch-processes. A man named Hop- 
 kins who was sent to the gallows, convicted of 
 murder, confessed there that he had brought 
 two hundred women to the stake, and for a 
 recompense of twenty shillings each, — a sum 
 with which the judge rewarded him. 
 
 And there was heard in all Europe for 
 many centuries not a single voice raised in 
 the effort to stay the murder with weapons 
 of reason or religion ! If there was any who 
 did not share the madness of his time, fear 
 paralyzed his tongue, and learning and relig- 
 ion, far from impeding the evil, had yoked 
 themselves to its triumphal car. With the 
 
198 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 Bible in their hands, the theologians sanc- 
 tioned these barbarous proceedings, and the 
 learned defended them with reasons drawn 
 from the fathers and with subtle argumenta- 
 tion. The Protestant theologians vied with 
 the Catholic in learning. Even Luther and 
 the first reformers did not check, but pro- 
 moted, the belief in devils. If paganism had 
 been described by the fathers as Satan's work 
 and empire, Luther referred the preceding 
 life of the Church from the beginning of 
 papacy to the same sphere, and changed 
 the whole history of humankind to a diabol- 
 ical drama. The struggle between the Refor- 
 mation and Catholicism contributed in still 
 another way to intensify the faith in devils. 
 The religious contest stirred the mind of the 
 age in its innermost depths. Many who oc- 
 cupied middle ground between the reforming 
 preacher on the one hand and the Catholic 
 priest on the other, were hesitating between 
 the old and the new, and many consciences 
 which had already embraced the new were 
 agitated by uneasiness and doubt. The Cath- 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE PEOPLE. 199 
 
 olic divine saw in these doubts the beginning 
 of the victory over Satanic error; the Protest- 
 ant theologian declared the same doubts to 
 be inspired by the originator of papacy, the 
 devil. We can appreciate this state of things 
 by reading Luther's " Tischreden." Men ter- 
 rified, for instance, by a dream or a strange 
 noise in the night (nothing more than this 
 was required for such an effect) hurried to 
 their pastor to lay their troubles before him. 
 They were then informed, on the one hand, 
 that the dream or the voice was caused by 
 the devil, to whom their apostacy had bound 
 them over, or, on the other, that Satan was 
 trying to frighten them back into the errors 
 which they had abandoned. In both cases 
 the archfiend was the agent. ' ' He was in 
 the castle of the knight, the palaces of the 
 mighty, the libraries of the learned, on every 
 page of the Bible, in the churches, in the 
 halls of justice, in the lawyer's chambers, in 
 the laboratories of physicians and naturalists, 
 in cottages, farmyards, stalls, — everywhere."* 
 
 * Horst: "Demonomagie," I. 
 
200 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 He was indeed everywhere, and Christen- 
 dom had become a hell. "The belief in the 
 devil," says a British author,* speaking upon 
 this subject, "had had the effect, that all ra- 
 tional knowledge had disappeared, that all 
 sound philosophy was denounced, that the 
 morality of the people was poisoned and hu- 
 manity sunk in a whirlpool of folly, godless- 
 ness and brutality. All classes were carried 
 away by this whirlpool. The God of nature 
 and Revelation had no longer the reins of 
 the world in his hand. The powers of hell 
 and darkness, born of a diseased imagination, 
 reigned upon the earth." 
 
 Throwing its gloomy shadow even into the 
 eighteenth century, it was, however, during 
 the Middle Ages that the belief in sorcery 
 sent down its deep and mighty roots. This 
 is not to be wondered at. The men of the 
 Middle Ages lived less in the real than in a 
 world of magic, in a world resembling more 
 
 * Colquhoun. 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE PEOPLE. 201 
 
 the paintings of " Helve tes-Breugliels " than 
 the descriptions of Armidas isle. The air was 
 saturated with demoniacal vapors. The pop- 
 ular literature consisted of legends of saints 
 and stories about the devil. The Church, the 
 general asylum against the devil, saw and 
 taught the people to see everywhere the play 
 of evil powers which must be conquered by 
 magical practices, and amidst Ahriman and 
 his hosts who had now established themselves 
 in the Occident, and as heirs to the horns and 
 tails of Pans and fauns, a crowd of native 
 spirits moved; imps, giants, trolls, forest-spir- 
 its, elves and hobgoblins in and on the earth; 
 nicks, river-sprites in the water, fiends in the 
 air, and salamanders in the fire. And to 
 these elementary spirits were added a whole 
 fauna of monsters, such as dragons, griffins, 
 were-wolves, witch-kine, Thor's-swine, and so 
 on. But this does not conclude the review: 
 spectres, ghosts, vampires, spirits causing the 
 nightmare, and so on, — supernatural beings 
 derived from the human world, but of dim- 
 mer outlines than the preceding, — conclude 
 
202 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 the motley procession. The mandrake has a 
 place in it also. This being deserves a few 
 lines here, inasmuch as it has now faded from 
 the popular superstitions. 
 
 The mandragora or alrun* is originally a 
 very rare herb which can hardly be found 
 except below the gallows where a pure youth 
 has been hanged. f He who seeks the herb 
 should know that its lower part has the 
 shape of a human being, and that its upper 
 part consists of broad leaves and yellow flow- 
 ers. When it is torn from the soil it sighs, 
 shrieks and moans so piteously, that he who 
 
 * MyXa Mavdpayopov (in Hebrew dudaim) is in the Sep- 
 tuagint a name for the love-apples with which Leah regaled her 
 husband (Gen. xxx. 14). Pliny speaks of the mandragora as a 
 poisonous herb, dangerous to dig; now already Columella 
 knows the mandragora as a half-human being — "semihomo 
 mandragoras." 
 
 f Man sagt: wenn ein Erbdieb, dem, wie den Ziguenern 
 das Stehlen angeboren ist, oder dessen Mutter, als sie mit ihm 
 schwanger ging, gestohlen, oder doch gross Geliisten dazu 
 gehabt— nach Einigen; auch ein Unschuldiger, welcher in der 
 Tortur sich fur einen Dieb bekennt — und der ein reiner Jung- 
 geselle ist, gehankt wird, und das Wasser lasst, oder sein Same 
 auf die Erde fallt, so wachst ansolchem Ort der Alraun. — "Nork: 
 Sitten und Gebrauche der Dcutschen und ihrer Nachbarvblker." 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE PEOPLE. 203 
 
 hears it must die. To find it one should go 
 out before sunrise on a Friday morning, 
 after having filled his ears carefully with 
 cotton, wax or pitch, and bring with him a 
 black dog without one white hair. The sign 
 of the cross must be made three times over 
 the mandrake, and the soil dug up carefully 
 all around it, so that it be attached only by 
 the fine rootlets. It is then tied by a string 
 to the tail of -the dog and he is attracted for- 
 ward by a piece of bread. The dog pulls 
 the plant out of the earth, but falls dead, 
 struck by the terrible shriek of the mandra- 
 gora. It is then brought home, washed in 
 red wine, wrapped in red and white silk, 
 laid in a shrine, washed again every Friday, 
 and dressed in a white frock. The mandra- 
 gora reveals hidden things and future events, 
 and procures for the owner the friendship 
 of all men. A silver coin deposited with it 
 in the evening is doubled in the morning. 
 Still the coin must not be too large in size. 
 If you buy the mandragora it remains with 
 you, throw it wherever you will, until you 
 
204 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 sell it again. If you keep it till your death 
 you must depart with it to hell. But it can be 
 sold only for a lower price than it was bought. 
 Therefore is he who has bought it with the 
 smallest existing coin, irretrievably lost. 
 
 The being called mandragora was, as we 
 see, a kind of " Bpiritus familiarise But it 
 appeared in still another form. It happened 
 that adventurers represented themselves as 
 mandragoras, and on account of this mystical 
 origin had gained success at court, having first 
 been spiritually made human by Christian 
 baptism. But they lost by baptism their won- 
 der-working power, greatly to their own and 
 others' pecuniary disadvantage. Still greater 
 was the number of those adventurers during 
 the Middle Ages who asserted themselves or 
 others to be the bastards of devils and hu- 
 man beings. But if they led a blameless life, 
 evincing a firm belief in the dogmas of the 
 Church, the danger of such a pedigree was 
 not greater than the honor. The son of a 
 fallen angel did not need to bend his head 
 before a man of noble birth. 
 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE PEOPLE. 205 
 
 In the demoniacal fauna of the Middle 
 Ages the were-wolf plays too important a 
 role to be passed over in silence. He was 
 the terror of rural districts. Were- wolves 
 are men who change themselves for a time 
 into wolves, and then rove about hunting for 
 children. The belief in the were-wolf is very 
 ancient. Antique authors speak of it as a 
 superstition among the Scythians, and among 
 shepherds and peasants in the eastern prov- 
 inces.* Then the change was considered to 
 result from certain herbs growing in Pontus; 
 in the Middle Ages it was the devil who 
 wrapped a wolf's hide around the witch 
 or the enchanted person. Even this belief 
 was embraced and proclaimed by Augustine. 
 Augustine, — the same father who declared 
 that he would not believe the gospel if the 
 authority of the Church did not exhort him 
 
 * So Propertius and Plinius. Virgil (eclog. YET.) makes a 
 shepherd sing: 
 
 Has herbas, atque hsec Ponto mihi lecta venena, 
 Ipse dedit Mceris: nascuntur plurima Ponto. 
 His ego scepe lupum fieri, et se conclere selvis 
 Moerim vidi. 
 
206 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 to do so, — found it worthy of a Sadducean or 
 a pagan philosopher alone to deny the exist- 
 ence of so well-known a phenomenon as the 
 were-wolf. The emperor Sigismund had the 
 question investigated "scientifically' 7 in his 
 presence by theologians, and they came to 
 the general agreement that the were-wolf is 
 "a positive and constant fact' 7 ; for the ex- 
 istence of the devil being accepted, there is 
 no reason to deny that of the were-wolf, sup- 
 ported as it is by the authority of the fathers 
 of the Church and by general experience.* 
 This "general experience 77 finally became, 
 like the belief in sorcery, a raging mental 
 disease, an epidemic ("insama zoanthroj)ica " ') 
 infecting whole districts in various parts of 
 Europe and sending many insane persons 
 who had confessed before the courts their 
 imagined sin, to the place of execution, f 
 
 * Melancthon, who firmly believed in the were-wolf, reasoned 
 in the same way. 
 
 f As late as 1804 a vagabond named Mare'chal was accused by 
 the peasants in Longueville as a sorcerer and were-wolf. At 
 his trial the mysterious were-wolf excursions were resolved into 
 thieving rambles, and Mare'chal was condemned for burglary to 
 the galleys. 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE PEOPLE. 207 
 
 Nearly related to this lycanthropy is the 
 more horrible vampirism. The vampires, ac- 
 cording to the belief of the Middle Ages, are 
 disembodied souls which clothe themselves 
 again in their buried bodies, steal at night 
 into houses, and suck from the nipple of the 
 sleeping all their blood. He who is thus be- 
 reft of the vital fluid is in his turn changed 
 into a vampire and visits preferably his own 
 relatives. If the corpse of a person suspect- 
 eel of vampirism is dug up, and its stomach 
 pressed, an abundance of fresh blood flows 
 from the mouth. The corpse is well pre- 
 served. The belief in vampires has likewise 
 produced a kind of psychical pestilence which 
 yet in the eighteenth century spread terror in 
 the Austrian provinces.* 
 
 If sorcery was an imaginary people's magic, 
 
 * Dining the restauration in 1815, when all the dead rose 
 in their sepulchres, the famous von Gorres sought to revive the 
 belief in vampirism. He has written about it a work of mighty- 
 learning, wherein he discourses profusely of the "vegetative" 
 sources of the body, which he asserts continue their activity 
 after death, and thus enable the soul of the deceased to re- 
 occupy and for a while reoperate its old machinery. 
 
208 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 there existed also a real, and it consisted in 
 an infinite variety of usages, observances and 
 rules for all conditions of life. Not to speak 
 of the astrologers' extensive hand- written cal- 
 endars, which pointed out which constellations, 
 seasons and days are auspicious for bathing, 
 bleeding, hair-cutting, shaving, house-build- 
 ing, wooing, engaging servants, setting out on 
 travels and so on, there existed among the 
 people an incredibly large mass of rules for 
 living which any body that would avoid the 
 constant danger of bringing misfortune on 
 himself and his family, must know. 
 
 From waking up in the morning to going 
 asleep at night, such maxims were to be ob- 
 served: putting the wrong foot first out of 
 bed in the morning was as sure to be fol- 
 lowed by annoyances in the course of the day 
 as a neglect to place the shoes with the heels 
 toward the bed at night was certain to cause 
 the visit of ghosts or evil dreams. When 
 children are born, no one must go out or in, 
 or open the door without bringing fire with 
 him, that the trolls may not find their way in 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE PEOTLE. 209 
 
 and exchange the child; and no one entering 
 must say a word before he has touched the 
 fire. For the same reason the child, while 
 unchristened, must be watched carefully every 
 night, and a fire must be kept constantly burn- 
 ing on the hearth. Before the christening a 
 child must not be moved from one room to 
 another without putting steel beside it. If 
 two boys are baptized on the same occasion, 
 that one who obtains his name and blessing 
 first will be best endowed both bodily and 
 mentally. On the day of christening the 
 mother should avoid handling an axe, knife 
 or other cutting instruments, otherwise the 
 child will some time be murdered. If the 
 floor under a cradle is swept, the child will 
 be bereft of its sleep. If the cradle is moved 
 while the child is not in it, the child becomes 
 peevish. When a child yawns, the sign of 
 the cross must be made over its mouth, and 
 the words "Jesus, Grod's son!" added; other- 
 wise the devil will then enter into it. If a 
 child looks out through the window or looks 
 
 in a mirror at night, it will fall sick. Chil- 
 li 
 
210 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 dren punished on Sunday become disobedi- 
 ent; but a child whipped on Good Friday 
 before sunset, will become obedient and well- 
 behaved. If the child walks about in one 
 shoe, the mother will have a sore back. If a 
 child walks or runs backwards, it drives its 
 parents so many steps into hell. A child 
 eating and reading at the same time gets a 
 bad memory. If a suitor's first gift to his 
 betrothed consists of shoes, she will be un- 
 faithful, if of stockings, she will be jealous. 
 Nuptials on Mondays, Wednesdays and Sat- 
 urdays are unfortunate. If a bridal proces- 
 sion comes to a stop for any reason, the mar- 
 ried pair will meet with dissensions. If the 
 marriage-ring is too small, misfortune is in 
 store. Of the bridal pair, that one dies first 
 who first kneels down or rises from kneeling. 
 Those who hold the canopy must not change 
 hands or touch the bride's crown, for that 
 prognosticates misfortune and ennui. If in 
 going out an old woman or one carrying 
 water is met, the room should be re-entered. 
 When the table is set, the bread must be laid 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE PEOPLE. 211 
 
 upon it immediately. Bread must never be 
 placed with the upper crust clown. Great 
 care must be taken to remove all substances 
 separated from the bocly, as hair, nails, blood; 
 they must be buried in the soil so as not to 
 come in contact with diseased persons, or fall 
 into the hands of witches. 
 
 We have selected the preceding observ- 
 ances and rules as examples of those thou- 
 sands of precepts for all conditions of life 
 which have been collected by investigations 
 in this field from the mouths of the people. 
 A full collection would require a large vol- 
 ume. In all of them is seen a servile fear 
 of mysterious evil influences, lurking on all 
 sides, and whose power or impotency as re- 
 gards man nowise depends on his morality, 
 but only on the way in which he observes 
 certain ethically indifferent acts. Many of 
 them seem to have arisen only by faulty 
 application of the theory of causality; others 
 depend on a symbolical method of contem- 
 plating nature. What a difference between 
 this popular wisdom and that stored up in 
 
212 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 the gnomes of the Greeks or in the heathen 
 Havamal ! Part of the former may be like- 
 wise an heirloom, but how exuberantly these 
 superstitions grew during the centuries of 
 ripe and glaring belief in personified evil; 
 how deeply they struck root among the peo- 
 ple, while Havamal has been saved from 
 the flood of time only by the hand of the 
 student ! 
 
 Among the superstitions are to be counted 
 the magical prognosis of diseases and death. 
 Many were the tokens of the approaching 
 skeleton - figure with his scythe and glass. 
 They were heard in the cawing of crows 
 and ravens, in the howling of dogs, in the 
 chirping of the cricket, and the regular tick- 
 ing of the wood-worm concealed in the wall. 
 If the horse of a priest riding to visit a sick 
 person in his parish lowered its head upon 
 arriving at a house, if a gnat was caught 
 gnawing any clothing, if a light suddenly 
 went out, if an image fell down, if a glass 
 or a mirror was broken, it indicated an ap- 
 proaching death in the house. To determine 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE PEOPLE. 213 
 
 the fate of a sick person, a piece of bread of 
 which he had eaten was laid in a dark cor- 
 ner, and its change of color was observed; 
 or a piece of fat with which the soles of the 
 sick had been smeared was offered to a dog, 
 or a stone was lifted to see if any thing was 
 concealed beneath it. If the bread became 
 dark, or if the dog refused to eat what was 
 offered him, or if there was no living thing 
 under the stone, then the sick person was 
 considered incurable, and nothing could be 
 hoped even from the inherited medical skill 
 of the wise old men and women. The exer- 
 cise of this skill consisted in the use, along 
 with "reading" and conjurations, partly of 
 herbs of more or less known efficiency, and 
 partly also, as it appears, of magnetic forces, 
 resorted to mechanically without reflection. 
 The medical art inherited among the peo- 
 ple from generation to generation is a subject 
 which none but a clear-sighted and unpre- 
 judiced scientist of the medical profession 
 can treat, and which has been left hitherto 
 without that investigation which the subject 
 
214 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 undoubtedly deserves, at least from a histori- 
 cal point of view. There was, at the end of 
 the Middle Ages, among the devotees of the 
 Galenic art a man of genius who, despair- 
 ing to find in the folios of the medical scho- 
 lastics any traces of truth, abandoned the 
 lecture-room and went forth into the world 
 without in order, as he himself said, to read 
 the book of nature and learn something of 
 that medical instinct with which Glod, as he 
 believed, must have endowed men as well 
 as animals, and which must find a true ex- 
 pression only in the people living in im- 
 mediate reciprocity with nature. This man 
 was Paracelsns. He who despised and over- 
 whelmed with mockery the coryphei of his 
 days in the medical faculties, did not disdain 
 to listen to "the experience of peasants, old 
 women, night- wanderers, and vagabonds," and 
 the magnetical system which he constructed 
 u by the illumination of nature's light, and 
 not by the lamp-flare of an apothecary's 
 shop," rest in all probability on the gene- 
 ral principles which he found in the plural- 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE PEOPLE. 215 
 
 ity of sympathetic cures practiced among 
 the people. In the "reading" by which 
 these cures were accompanied, Paracelsus 
 saw rightly nothing but a subjective mo- 
 ment, and means of making faith and im- 
 agination the allies of the physician. A 
 mass of these conjuration-formulae in differ- 
 ent diseases have been collected and pub- 
 lished in various countries of Europe. They 
 offer the reader little or nothing of interest.* 
 A very common usage during the Middle 
 Ages was to measure the sick person, at one 
 
 * Some of tlie popular forms of conjuration are in Latin, 
 though corrupted so as to be almost beyond recognition. A 
 couple of restored examples may be given. This is the formula 
 against bloody-flux: 
 
 Sanguis mane in venis 
 Sicut Christus in pcenis, 
 Sanguis mane tixus 
 Sicut Christus fuit crucifixus. 
 Against fever: 
 
 Deus vos solvet sambuco, panem et sal ego vobis adduco, 
 febrem tertianam et quotidianani accipite vos, qui nolo earn. 
 Against epilepsy: 
 
 Melchior, Balthaser, portans hsec nomina Caspar, 
 Solvitur e morbo Domini pietate caduco. 
 Perpetret et ternas defunctis psallere missas. 
 Barachun. Barachagim. Destrue. Subalgat. 
 
216 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 time to cure him, at another to find out if 
 the disease was decreasing or increasing. 
 Another means was to drag him through a 
 hole. Sick children were pulled through 
 holes dug in the earth or through a cleft 
 cherry-tree. Sick sheep were forced to creep 
 through the cleft of an oak, and so on. An- 
 other remedy against many kinds of suffer- 
 ings was the binding of a thread or a band 
 which had been read over, around the neck or 
 some limb of the sick. Connected with this 
 is the tying of witch-knots, used only with 
 evil intent. Bands of different colors and 
 material* were required for these. They 
 were buried near the dwelling of the person 
 to be injured. It was thought that by this 
 means any limb or bodily power of an enemy 
 could be impaired. A French jurist and 
 witch-judge, Pierre Delancre, complains that 
 in his daj^s there were few married couples 
 
 * Compare Virgil, Eel. VIII : 
 
 Terna tibi lisec primum triplici diversa colore 
 
 Licia circumdo. . . 
 
 Necte tribus nodis ternos, Amarylli, colores : 
 
 Necte, Amarylli, modo : et Veneris, die, vincula necto. 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE PEOPLE. VlI 
 
 in France whose happiness had not been 
 marred by this means ; young men hardly 
 dared to marry from fear of it. Hincmar, 
 archbishop of Eheims, advised, as a remedy 
 against this influence, a diligent use of the sac- 
 raments. In French rituals church -prayers 
 against the effects of witch-knots are pre- 
 scribed. Hardly less universally was it the 
 custom to make dolls of rags, dough, wax or 
 clay, baptize them with the name of the 
 hated person, put them in the fire or pierce 
 them with needles, and bury them under the 
 threshold of that individual, all in order to 
 inflict sufferings on him.* Diseases could 
 also be transferred to dolls by reading cer- 
 tain formulas, and placing them in some in- 
 accessible place, or in running water. 
 
 Not only against diseases, but also against 
 the dangers of fire and war, against ill-luck 
 in love or chase, on voyages and the like, 
 magical remedies were freely resorted to by 
 
 * Compare same eclogue: 
 
 Limus ut hie durescit, et hsec tit cera liquescit 
 Uno eodemque igni: sic nostro Daphnis amore. 
 
218 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 the people. The " Witch - hammer " com- 
 plains bitterly against the criminal prac- 
 tice of the soldiers in mutilating crucifixes 
 in order to harden themselves against the 
 sword and bullets. The executioner in Pas- 
 sau gained, daring the Thirty Years' War, 
 a wide reputation for his skill in hardening 
 the human frame, which he did by means 
 of scraps of paper with cabalistic figures 
 (Passauer Henkers-Zettel), which were eaten. 
 The belief that hunters procured, by means 
 of conjurations, "free-arrows" and "free- 
 bullets" was very common. The "Witch- 
 hammer " accuses various potentates of hav- 
 ing in their pay "diabolical archers" who 
 hit their mark from a long distance with- 
 out aiming. It was customary at fires to 
 throw into the flames so-called shields of 
 David, — plates with two intersecting trian- 
 gles and the motto "Agla " (the initials of 
 four Hebrew words meaning: "Thou art 
 strong eternally, Lord!") and " consum- 
 matum est." As late as in the middle of the 
 last century the magistrate of Leipzig or- 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE PEOPLE. 219 
 
 dered that such plates should be laid up in 
 the rathhaus to be used in case of fires. 
 In Catholic countries the clergy took the 
 employment of magical appliances against 
 fires into their own hands; processions sing- 
 ing and bearing relics went around the burn- 
 ing house three times, and if this had no 
 salutary effect, it was a sure sign that God 
 had allowed the devil to wield the consum- 
 ing element unto destruction. 
 
 The extent of this treatise does not al- 
 low a detailed exposition of the many di- 
 vinatory arts which had their adepts among 
 the people. The Church preaching mightily 
 against those arts and representing them as 
 devices of the devil, the father of lies and 
 founder of oracles, did not, however, deny, 
 but could confirm by biblical quotation, their 
 power to unveil futurity. 
 
 Every thing that we have here described 
 was to the Church black magic : all mystical 
 practices among the people, whether resorted 
 to for good or evil purposes, to heal or cure, 
 were looked upon as implying contempt for 
 

 220 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 the divine magic of the Church itself, and 
 also a league with the devil, if not a formal 
 one, at any rate a "pactum implieitum." It 
 was therefore the possessors of the traditional 
 popular art of healing who were first sent 
 to the stake wherever the inquisition com- 
 menced its trials. But no terrorism could 
 eradicate the popular magic so long as the 
 persecutors themselves believed in its effi- 
 ciency, and fought only for a consecrated 
 superstition against its outlawed counterfeit. 
 The struggle against the superstition of the 
 Church as well as of the people, was re- 
 served for another time and for another the- 
 ory of the universe and of morals. 
 
 The so-called wandering scholastics (scholas- 
 tici vagantes, schohres erratici) formed a kind 
 of connecting link between the magic of the 
 learned and that of the common people. 
 They were ruined and adventurous students, 
 priests and monks who wandered about in 
 the rural districts of most of the European 
 states, especially Germany, representing them- 
 selves as treasure-diggers, selling u spiritusfa- 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE PEOPLE. 221 
 
 miliares" amulets, love-potions, and life-elix- 
 irs, conjuring spirits, divining by the stars, and 
 healing men and cattle. These adventurers 
 were associated in a regular guild, and had 
 like other vagrant tradesmen, their lodg- 
 ings and hospitals in the cities. They were 
 dreaded competitors of the witch-fathers of 
 the cloisters, were several times excommuni- 
 cated by the Church, and seem to have nearly 
 disappeared when the witch-trials commenced 
 in earnest. It is to a person of that kind 
 that the Faust-legend is attached. It reflects 
 the popular opinions concerning the power 
 of learned magicians.* 
 
 The same period which saw the bull of 
 Innocentius promulgated, and the belief in 
 devils culminate in the witch-processes, gave 
 birth to the renaissance. This saviour came 
 
 * The Faust-legend, formed during the time of the Eeforma- 
 tion, sought at first to employ one of the heroes of the learned 
 magic, Henricus Cornelius Agrippa, as its chief character; but a 
 biography of him, published by his pupil, Wierus, having dis- 
 pelled the fantastical halo enveloping his personality, the crea- 
 tive desire sought a more obscure object which it could trans- 
 form according to its bizarre imaginations. 
 
222 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 to the world in the hour of its intensest need. 
 The Hellenic spirit, born again from the 
 study of classic literature and classic art, was 
 a new Messias putting his heel on the head 
 of the old serpent and saving humanity from 
 the power of death and of the devil. The 
 people sitting in darkness illumined only by 
 the lurid flames kindled by the inquisition 
 saw a great light and stretched their hands 
 towards the new dawn. The study of the 
 ancients had an immense influence, all the 
 more as the actual world was so different 
 from the antique world. The exhumed mon- 
 uments of Hellas revealed other state systems 
 than the feudal of the Middle Ages, — states 
 which were organizations, not mere mechan- 
 ical conglomerates of conquerors and con- 
 quered, and were founded upon a nobler ba- 
 sis than given or assumed privileges. These 
 monuments revealed an independent search 
 for truth which had placed itself above tra- 
 dition — a novel spectacle to the people of 
 the Middle Ages ! They revealed an art in 
 which harmony reigned between spirit and 
 
THE MAGIC OF THE PEOPLE. 223 
 
 nature, between the higher life and sensu- 
 ousness, between the relative opposites which 
 the Middle Ages had conceived as absolute, 
 placing them against one another in a strug- 
 gle which wrecked beauty and moralit}-. 
 They revealed large symmetrical characters 
 as free from the asceticism of the Middle 
 Ages as from the wild sensuality of that 
 time. All these ideas, hailed with enthusi- 
 asm, could not but transform the appearance 
 of the world. They overthrew the darkness 
 of the Middle Ages, put the devil and hell 
 to flight, and drove them into that lumber- 
 corner of the spiritual kingdom where they 
 are at present, but from which, at any po- 
 litical reaction, they peer out eagerly watch- 
 ing whether they may not once more bring 
 the great wide world into their power. But 
 they shall scarcely succeed in this, as long 
 as freedom of thought and scientific inde- 
 pendence are guarded as the foremost con- 
 ditions of the spiritual health of mankind; 
 and they shall utterly fail when an all-ex- 
 tended intelligence has taught the people 
 
224 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 that the premises of the devil-dogma, if they 
 could be again inoculated into the popular 
 mind, would show anew the same results 
 which have been depicted above, and lead 
 us back to the terrible times of the inquisi- 
 tion and the burning of witches. This, no 
 doubt, even the orthodox defenders of be- 
 lief in an impersonated evil principle do not 
 desire ; but they do not observe that history 
 acts more consistently than they, and cures 
 general errors only by making long genera- 
 tions diaw from them the last consequences 
 and suffer their full effect. 
 
 THE END. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Adam's sin, brings countless 
 woes on man, 12. 
 
 Agnus Dei, 63; its power, 64. 
 
 Ahriman, affirmed to have been 
 Judaized in "Satan," 35; re- 
 Tilled at Marathon, 36; bis 
 power over man limited, 47; 
 author of black magic, 51. 
 
 Alexander, conquers Asia, but 
 helps the triumph of dual- 
 ism, 37. 
 
 Ammonius Sacca, tries to re- 
 store Neoplatonism, 40. 
 
 Amulets employed in Church- 
 magic, 62, 63. 
 
 Angels, belong to the lowest 
 hierarchy, 5; have the care of 
 mortals, 6. 
 
 Appolonius of Tyana, deemed 
 the peer of Christ in gift of 
 miracles, 40, 163. 
 
 Archangels, part of the lowest 
 hierarchy, 5 ; protect religion, 
 6. 
 
 Archetypes, world of, i. e., the 
 Empyrean, 1 ; all celestial 
 things are in the Empyrean; 
 are immaterial, 6. 
 
 Aristotle's method revives sci- 
 ence, 44. 
 
 Astrology, introduction to (Ta- 
 ble II. of correspondences), 
 127. 
 
 Atmosphere of earth situate next 
 below space of the moon, 2. 
 
 Augustine, a Manicheian, 43; 
 last of the fathers educated in 
 philosophy, 41 ; quoted on 
 baptism, 57; quoted on the 
 existence of fauns, satyrs, etc., 
 162; believes in the existence 
 of were-wolves, 206. 
 
 Baptism, copied, in anticipa- 
 tion, in the Mithras myste- 
 ries, 57. 
 
 Baptismal water, its various ef- 
 ficacy, 58. 
 
 Bartholomeus Chassaneus, in- 
 structs how to proceed in the 
 courts against common pests, 
 78. 
 
 Benoit de Montferrand, bishop 
 of Lausanne, excommunicates 
 may-bugs, 75, 76. 
 
 Bereshit, its mystic meaning, 
 114. 
 
 Bethesda, the efficacy of the 
 water in its pool inferior to 
 that of baptism, 57. 
 
226 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Bishop Gerhard, converts the 
 heretics of Arras, 60. 
 
 Boethius, on the basis of crea- 
 tion, 124. 
 
 Borrichius (Olaf Borch) cited, 
 115. 
 
 Bunsen's Gott in der Geschich- 
 te, quoted, 93, 94, 175. 
 
 Cabalists' method of searching 
 out the inner meaning of the 
 Bible, 144; discover the sev- 
 enty-two mystical names of 
 God, 146. 
 
 Christian fathers, one of, doubts 
 if his way of attaining perfec- 
 tion is the only one, 32; one 
 of, declares every thing in 
 heathen thought to be of the 
 devil, 42. 
 
 Church the, prepared for by 
 election of the Jews, and 
 founded by Christ, 14; is one 
 body; accumulates a wealth 
 of supererogatory works, and 
 grants remission of guilt also 
 to dead, 15; a mole against 
 the tide of sin, 16; the king- 
 dom of God on earth; her 
 destiny universal extension, 
 18 ; can not check the growth 
 of sin; her emblem an ark, 
 22; the only legitimate bodily 
 physician, 68; forbids at sev- 
 eral councils the secular prac- 
 tice of medicine, 72. 
 
 Church bells, their power against 
 the demons, 74. 
 
 Clemens of Alexandria, fights 
 
 for the union of belief and 
 thought, 41; quoted on the 
 mission of philosophy, 42; 
 rejects the doctrine of eternal 
 punishment, 43. 
 
 Colquhoun quoted, 200. 
 
 Conception-billets described, 
 64-66. 
 
 "Conjurer of Hell," 148. 
 
 Contrast between state of Soci- 
 ety in Middle Ages and Hel- 
 lenic and later European civ- 
 ilizations due to different the- 
 ories of the universe, 29. 
 
 Cosmic Philosophy of Middle 
 Ages, 1-28. 
 
 Cyprianus and others enter into 
 league with Satan, 165. 
 
 Delrio, ascribes the origin of 
 witchcraft to Zoroaster, 45. 
 
 Demonianism, cured by the 
 Church, 70. 
 
 Demons, fallen intelligences of 
 the middle hierarchy, 11; war 
 against the good angels ; cause 
 storms and drouth; pervade 
 the elements, 12; entice man, 
 13; able to take full posses- 
 sion of men, 25. 
 
 Deutsche Theologie, quoted on 
 the nature of evil, 26. 
 
 Differences between the dualism 
 of Zoroaster and the Chris- 
 tian, 46-48. 
 
 Dissection prohibited, 71. — 
 
 Dominion, order of angels, re- 
 ceives the commands of God, 
 5. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 221 
 
 
 Dualism, of the Middle Ages 
 affirmed to have been derived 
 from Persia, 34; its conflict 
 with the unitarian notions of 
 Greece the sum of history 
 between Cyrus and Constan- 
 tine ; wins a flank-position on 
 the Mediterranean upon the 
 return of the Jews from cap- 
 tivity; its demon-belief testi- 
 fied to by the many demoni- 
 acs in the time of Christ, 
 35; magic and belief upon 
 authority its necessary con- 
 sequences, 36; derived from 
 Zoroaster, 38; spreads over 
 the Eoman provinces, 39; ad- 
 vances against Europe, as 
 Manicheism, 43; is finally ab- 
 solute and brings on the Dark 
 Ages, 44; is intensified after 
 entering Christianity, 46, and 
 undergoes changes, 47, 48; at- 
 tacks the inner authority, 92. 
 
 Earth, encompassed by ten 
 heavens, 1; made a paradise 
 for man; explains symboli- 
 cally man's destiny, 8. 
 
 Egidius, opposes fire-worship, 
 171. 
 
 Electrum magicum, 138. 
 
 Elements, four prime in the 
 constitution of all things, 3. 
 
 Eleusinian mysteries, fragments 
 of, preserved in magic of the 
 learned, 117. 
 
 Empire, third order of angels, 
 ward off all hindrances, 5. 
 
 Empyrean, the heaven of fire; 
 world of archetypes, 1; re- 
 mains after the final confla- 
 gration, 26. 
 
 Europe, belief, of in Middle 
 Ages, 1; defeats dualism, 36; 
 goes into the enemy's coun- 
 try, 37. 
 
 Eucharist, perennial source of 
 power and sanctification, 59. 
 
 Faust, quoted, 98, 109. 
 Faust-legend, at first proposed 
 
 to employ H. C. Agrippa as 
 
 its chief character, 221. 
 Field-rats prosecuted, 78-80. 
 Formula against bloody-flux, 
 
 215; against epilepsy, 215. 
 Formulary of malediction used 
 
 by priests, 81, 82. 
 
 Gnosticism springs up, 38. 
 
 God, enthroned in the Empy- 
 rean, 1; associates with man, 
 8-9. 
 
 Gregory IX. exhorts to a cru- 
 sade against the Stedinghs, 
 174. 
 
 Gregory the Great, mentioned, 
 44, 60; forbade the abroga- 
 tion of pagan festivities, 160. 
 
 Heaven of crystal, next beneath 
 Empyrean, — prlmum mobile ; 
 of fixed stars, devoid of 
 weight, 2. 
 
 Hell, becomes a place of pun- 
 ishment, 11; remains after 
 final conflagration, 26. 
 
228 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Henricus Cornelius Agrippa ab 
 Nettesheim, on God as the 
 source of all power, 3, 4; is 
 not chosen to represent the 
 magician in the Faust-legend, 
 221. 
 
 Heretics of Arras, their belief, 
 60. 
 
 Hermes Trismegistus, trans- 
 muted whatever he chose to 
 gold, 115. 
 
 Hincmar, archb. of Eheims, 
 propounds a remedy against 
 witch-knots, 216. 
 
 Hippocrates, mentioned, 71, 72. 
 
 Historical development of Mid- 
 dle-age Cosmic Philosophy, 
 28-51. 
 
 History, a spiritual comedy, 23. 
 
 Ilomunculus philosophicus, how 
 produced, 132, 133. 
 
 Horst's Demonomagie quoted, 
 199. 
 
 Houses of the planets, 134. 
 
 " Hubertus-bands " and "Hu- 
 bertus-keys, " 69. 
 
 Images, their miraculous prop- 
 erties, 67, 68. 
 
 Incense appropriate for Mars, 
 139. 
 
 " Incubi" and " succuhi," 167. 
 
 Inevitable causation, not ad- 
 mitted in the Middle Age 
 Cosmic philosophy, 4. 
 
 Isis, secrets of entrusted to the 
 sons of Ham, 114. 
 
 Jacob's ladder, structure of the 
 universe likened to, 6. 
 
 Jamblichus, practices secret 
 arts, to outrival Christian 
 magi, 40. 
 
 Jean Bodin, ascribes witchcraft 
 to Zoroaster, 45. 
 
 John of Salisbury upon witch- 
 festivals, 173. 
 
 Judaico-Alexandrian philoso- 
 phy blooms, 38. 
 
 Jupiter belonging to the second 
 of the planetary spaces, 2. 
 
 Knowledge of highest truths 
 revealed to man, 20. 
 
 Lucifer, prince of Seraphim, 9; 
 revolts, and wars with Mi- 
 chael, 10; is conquered, is 
 permitted to tempt man, 10; 
 transformed into an angel of 
 light, 12; triumphs, 14. 
 
 Luther, on Satanic malice as 
 the cause of accidents, 24, 25; 
 esteems highly "Deutsche 
 Theologie " 26; Tischreden 
 quoted, 168; referred to, 199. 
 
 Lycanthropy of the Middle 
 Ages, 205-207. 
 
 "Magia Divina," quoted 130- 
 133. 
 
 Magic, of the Church, 51-94; 
 what enters into all employ- 
 ment of it, 53, 54; white and 
 black magic, celestial and di- 
 abolical, 54; of the Church 
 defined, 92.— Magic of the 
 Learned, 95-158; is derived 
 from various sources, 116; 
 
INDEX. 
 
 229 
 
 first principle of, 128. — Magic 
 of the People, 158-224; black 
 magic and devil worship, 164. 
 
 Magician, the learned of the 
 15th century, 100; his apart- 
 ments described, 105, 108, 
 110; explains his science, 112- 
 129; performs an incantation, 
 129-155. 
 
 Malice of the devil, causes un- 
 foreseen accidents, 24, 25. 
 
 Man, a microcosm ; must dwell 
 on earth, 7; at first hap- 
 
 py. 8. 
 
 Mandrake, superstitions con- 
 cerning, 201. 
 
 Manicheism, new form of dual- 
 ism; advances against Eu- 
 rope; finds a follower in Au- 
 gustine, 43. 
 
 Marathon, Salamis and Plataea 
 really battle-fields of a relig- 
 ious war, 85. 
 
 Mars, .situate in the third of the 
 planetary spaces, 2. 
 
 Matter, devoid of force and all 
 quality, 3. 
 
 May-bugs excommunicated, 75. 
 
 Men are often terrified into 
 an alliance with the devil, 
 25. 
 
 Mercury, path of in planetary 
 world, 2. 
 
 Middle Ages, Cosmic Philoso- 
 phy of, 1-28; historical origin 
 of, 28-55, 94. 
 
 Miracles, defined, 4. 
 
 Mithras mysteries, contain a 
 copy, by anticipation, of the 
 
 sacrament of baptism, 57; im- 
 itate other mysteries of the 
 Church, 58, 60. 
 
 Moon, path of, 2. 
 
 "Mus exerderaius" etc., quoted, 
 60. 
 
 Native spirits popularly believed 
 
 to inhabit land, air and water, 
 
 202. 
 Nature, knowledge of, same as 
 
 a knowledge of the angels, 5. 
 Neoplatonism arises, 40. 
 Nine revolving heavens, 1. 
 Nork's "Sitten und Gebrauche 
 
 der Deutschen," etc., quoted, 
 
 202. 
 Number 72, its significance, 143, 
 
 144; number 488, 147. 
 
 Origen, attempts to unite belief 
 and thought, 41, rejects the 
 doctrine of eternal punish- 
 ment, 43. 
 
 Origin of the names of the days 
 of the week, 135, 136. 
 
 Ormuzd and Ahriman, are the 
 real adversaries repelled at 
 Marathon, 36; author of icJiiie 
 magic, 54. 
 
 Pentecost, its gifts transmitted, 
 91. 
 
 Peter de Abano, author of an 
 important question, 97. 
 
 Perpetuum mobile naturce, meth- 
 od of producing, 130, 131. 
 
 Pierre Delancre complains 
 against witch-knots, 216. 
 
230 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Philosophy, system of possible 
 within the Church, 20; adhe- 
 rents of the scholastic may 
 nse Aristotle's dialectics, 21. 
 Planetary world, next beneath 
 that of fixed stars, 2; consist- 
 ing of seven heavens, 2. 
 
 Planets guided by angels, 3; 
 influence the elements and 
 man, 134, 135. 
 
 Plotinus, tries to restore Neo- 
 platinism, 40. 
 
 Pope, feudal lord of emperors, 
 18 ; determines the true induc- 
 tions of philosophy, 21; Ser- 
 gius III., 63; Urban Vitus, 
 65. 
 
 Pope John XXII., complains 
 that his life is endangered by 
 sorcerers, 177. 
 
 Pope Innocent VIII., puts forth 
 a bull against the spread of 
 sorcery, 178. 
 
 Popular maxims of superstition, 
 208-211. 
 
 Power, from a spiritual source 
 only, 3; communicated to the 
 heavens and the earth by an- 
 gels, 3. 
 
 Power, order of angels, guide 
 the stars and planets, 5. 
 
 Principalities, Archangels, and 
 Angels, the third and lowest 
 hierarchy, hold supremacy 
 over terrestrial things, 5, 6. 
 
 Principalities, part of the low- 
 est hierarchy of angels, guar- 
 dian spirits of nations, 6. 
 
 Proclus, lastNeoplatonician, 44. 
 
 Pythagoras, glorified as fit to 
 rank with Christ in miracu- 
 lous gifts, 40; believed the 
 universe founded on num- 
 bers, 124. 
 
 Rain-processions in the Middle 
 
 Ages, 74. 
 Reason, darkened by apostacy, 
 
 13. 
 " Recognitiones divi dementis 
 
 ad Jacob.," quoted, 165. 
 Reformation, retains somewhat 
 
 of the Church-magic, 92. 
 Relics, their magical use, 66. 
 Remigius, ascribes witchcraft 
 
 to Zoroaster, 45. 
 Renaissance, overthrew the 
 
 darkness and superstition of 
 
 the Middle Ages, 222-223. 
 
 Saints, intercession of, more ef- 
 fective than that of Seraphim, 
 17; not disturbed by misery 
 of the damned, 27; have con- 
 trol over various diseases. 69. 
 
 Satan, the Judaized Ahriman. 
 35. 
 
 Saturn, belonging to the first 
 of the planetary spaces, 2. 
 
 Scale of the Holy Tetrad (Ta- 
 ble I.), 123. 
 
 Schemhamphoras, or God's mys- 
 tical names, 144, 146. 
 
 Scholastici erranles, 220. 
 
 Science the, of the Greeks is 
 rational, originates logic and 
 geometry; of the Middle Ages 
 is magic, 30. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 231 
 
 Scotus Erigena, mentioned, 44. 
 
 Seraphim Cherubim and 
 Thrones, the first hierar- 
 chy, and nearest God, 5. 
 
 Simon Magus, legend of his 
 discomfiture by St. Peter, 165. 
 
 Sprenger, author of Malleus 
 Malificarum, ascribes the or- 
 igin of witchcraft to Zoroas- 
 ter, 45. 
 
 Stedinghs persecuted, 174. 
 
 tiumma Theologica, quoted on 
 the delectation of the re- 
 deemed upon seeing the mis- 
 ery of the damned, 28. 
 
 Sun, belonging to the middle 
 space of planetary world, 2. 
 
 Superstitious prognostics of dis- 
 ease and death, 212-216. 
 
 Synodal decree of Ancyra, 171. 
 
 Table of correspondences be- 
 tween microcosmos and things 
 on earth, and the planets, 127. 
 
 Tekfael, name of the demon 
 summoned, 147, 153. 
 
 Terrestrial things, images of the 
 celestial, 6; are composed of 
 the coarsest matter, 6 ; are all 
 under the control of special 
 angels, 7; are also influenced 
 by stars, planets and arche- 
 types, 7. 
 
 Theologie der Thatsachen wider 
 die Theologie der Ehetorik 
 (A. F. C. H. Vilmar, 1857) 
 quoted, 48-50. 
 
 Thomas Aquinas, on the acqui- 
 escence of the saints in the 
 punishment of the lost, 28; 
 on the power of demons, 73. 
 
 Universe, a vast lyre, 7; an un- 
 broken harmony, 9; divided 
 between Good and Evil, 11. 
 
 University of 15th century de- 
 scribed, 96-98. 
 
 Vampirism, 207. 
 
 Venus, path of in planetary 
 world, 2. 
 
 Vilmar, Neo-Lutkeran, would 
 restore to the clergy their 
 mediaeval prerogatives, 48-50. 
 
 Virgil quoted, 205, 216. 
 
 Von Gorres, attempts to re- 
 store the belief in vampirism, 
 207. 
 
 Witch-hammer, contains direc- 
 tions for the judge in witch- 
 trials, 90; 178-195. 
 
 Witches' Sabbath, supposed or- 
 igin of, 170. 
 
 Witch-knots, 216. 
 
 Zoroaster, the reputed founder 
 of magic science ; and by some 
 believed the author of witch- 
 craft, 45; his religion allows 
 evil to disappear in course of 
 time, and promises a final 
 restoration of all things, 46. 
 
 Zoroaster and Plato's systems 
 blended, 37. 
 

 
 
 
 
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