Elizabethan Demonology Part 7

[Footnote 3: Harsnet, p. 225.]

73. The treatment to which, in consequence of his belief in possession, unfortunate persons like Mainy and Sommers, who were probably only suffering from some harmless form of mental disease, were subjected, was hardly calculated to effect a cure. The most ignorant quack was considered perfectly competent to deal with cases which, in reality, require the most delicate and judicious management, combined with the profoundest physiological, as well as psychological, knowledge. The ordinary method of dealing with these lunatics was as simple as it was irritating. Bonds and confinement in a darkened room were the specifics; and the monotony of this treatment was relieved by occasional visits from the sage who had charge of the case, to mumble a prayer or mutter an exorcism. Another popular but unpleasant cure was by flagellation; so that Romeo's

"Not mad, but bound more than a madman is, Shut up in prison, kept without my food, Whipped and tormented,"[1]

if an exaggerated description of his own mental condition is in itself no inflated metaphor.

[Footnote 1: I. ii. 55.]

74. Shakspere, in "The Comedy of Errors," and indirectly also in "Twelfth Night," has given us intentionally ridiculous ill.u.s.trations of scenes which he had not improbably witnessed, in the country at any rate, and which bring vividly before us the absurdity of the methods of diagnosis and treatment usually adopted:--

_Courtesan._ How say you now? is not your husband mad?

_Adriana._ His incivility confirms no less.

Good doctor Pinch, you are a conjurer; Establish him in his true sense again, And I will please you what you will demand.

_Luciana._ Alas! how fiery and how sharp he looks!

_Courtesan._ Mark how he trembles in his extasy!

_Pinch._ Give me your hand, and let me feel your pulse.[1]

_Ant. E._ There is my hand, and let it feel your ear.

_Pinch._ I charge thee, Satan, housed within this man, To yield possession to my holy prayers, And to thy state of darkness his thee straight; I conjure thee by all the saints in heaven.

_Ant. E._ Peace, doting wizard, peace; I am not mad.

_Pinch._ O that thou wert not, poor distressed soul![2]

After some further business, Pinch p.r.o.nounces his opinion:

"Mistress, both man and master are possessed; I know it by their pale and deadly looks: They must be bound, and laid in some dark room."[3]

But "good doctor Pinch" seems to have been mild even to feebleness in his conjuration; many of his brethren in art had much more effective formulae. It seems that devils were peculiarly sensitive to any opprobrious epithets that chanced to be bestowed upon them. The skilful exorcist took advantage of this weakness, and, if he could only manage to keep up a flow of uncomplimentary remarks sufficiently long and offensive, the unfortunate spirit became embarra.s.sed, restless, agitated, and finally took to flight. Here is a specimen of the "nicknames" which had so potent an effect, if Harsnet is to be credited:--

"Heare therefore, thou senceless false lewd spirit, maister of devils, miserable creature, tempter of men, deceaver of bad angels, captaine of heretiques, father of lyes, fatuous b.e.s.t.i.a.l ninnie, drunkard, infernal theefe, wicked serpent, ravening woolfe, leane hunger-bitten impure sow, seely beast, truculent beast, cruel beast, b.l.o.o.d.y beast, beast of all blasts, the most b.e.s.t.i.a.ll acherontall spirit, smoakie spirit, Tartareus spirit!"[4] Whether this objurgation terminates from loss of breath on the part of the conjurer, or the precipitate departure of the spirit addressed, it is impossible to say; it is difficult to imagine any logical reason for its conclusion.

[Footnote 1: The cessation of the pulse was one of the symptoms of possession. See the case of Sommers, Tryal of Maister Darrell, 1599.]

[Footnote 2: IV. iv. 48, 62.]

[Footnote 3: Ibid. 95.]

[Footnote 4: Harsnet, p. 113.]

75. Occasionally other, and sometimes more elaborate, methods of exorcism than those mentioned by Romeo were adopted, especially when the operation was conducted for the purpose of bringing into prominence some great religious truth. The more evangelical of the operators adopted the plan of lying on the top of their patients, "after the manner of Elias and Pawle."[1] But the Catholic exorcists invented and carried to perfection the greatest refinement in the art. The patient, seated in a "holy chair," specially sanctified for the occasion, was compelled to drink about a pint of a compound of sack and salad oil; after which refreshment a pan of burning brimstone was held under his nose, until his face was blackened by the smoke.[2] All this while the officiating priest kept up his invocation of the fiends in the manner ill.u.s.trated above; and, under such circ.u.mstances, it is extremely doubtful whether the most determined character would not be prepared to see somewhat unusual phenomena for the sake of a short respite.

[Footnote 1: The Tryall of Maister Darrell, 1599, p. 2.]

[Footnote 2: Harsnet, p. 53.]

76. Another remarkable method of exorcism was a process termed "firing out" the fiend.[1] The holy flame of piety resident in the priest was so terrible to the evil spirit, that the mere contact of the holy hand with that part of the body of the afflicted person in which he was resident was enough to make him shrink away into some more distant portion; so, by a judicious application of the hand, the exorcist could drive the devil into some limb, from which escape into the body was impossible, and the evil spirit, driven to the extremity, was obliged to depart, defeated and disgraced.[2] This influence could be exerted, however, without actual corporal contact, as the following quaint extract from Harsnet's book will show:--

"Some punie rash devil doth stay till the holy priest be come somewhat neare, as into the chamber where the demoniacke doth abide, purposing, as it seemes, to try a pluck with the priest; and then his hart sodainly failing him (as Demas, when he saw his friend Chinias approach), cries out that he is tormented with the presence of the priest, and so is fierd out of his hold."[3]

[Footnote 1: This expression occurs in Sonnet cxliv., and evidently with the meaning here explained; only the bad angel is supposed to fire out the good one.]

[Footnote 2: Harsnet, pp. 77, 96, 97.]

[Footnote 3: Ibid. p. 65.]

77. The more violent or uncommon of the bodily diseases were, as the quotation from Cotta's book shows[1], attributed to the same diabolic source. In an era when the most profound ignorance prevailed with regard to the simplest laws of health; when the commoner diseases were considered as G.o.d's punishment for sin, and not attributable to natural causes; when so eminent a divine as Bishop Hooper could declare that "the air, the water, and the earth have no poison in themselves to hurt their lord and master man,"[2] unless man first poisoned himself with sin; and when, in consequence of this ignorance and this false philosophy, and the inevitable neglect attendant upon them, those fearful plagues known as "the Black Death" could, almost without notice, sweep down upon a country, and decimate its inhabitants--it is not wonderful that these terrible scourges were attributed to the malevolence of the Evil One.

[Footnote 1: See ---- 63, 64.]

[Footnote 2: I Hooper, p. 308. Parker Society.]

78. But it is curious to notice that, although possessing such terrible powers over the bodies and minds of mortals, devils were not believed to be potent enough to destroy the lives of the persons they persecuted unless they could persuade their victims to renounce G.o.d. This theory probably sprang out of the limitation imposed by the Almighty upon the power of Satan during his temptation of Job, and the advice given to the sufferer by his wife, "Curse G.o.d, and die." Hence, when evil spirits began their a.s.saults upon a man, one of their first endeavours was to induce him to do some act that would be equivalent to such a renunciation. Sometimes this was a bond a.s.signing the victim's soul to the Evil One in consideration of certain worldly advantages; sometimes a formal denial of his baptism; sometimes a deed that drives away the guardian angel from his side, and leaves the devil's influence uncounteracted. In "The Witch of Edmonton,"[1] the first act that Mother Sawyer demands her familiar to perform after she has struck her bargain, is to kill her enemy Banks; and the fiend has reluctantly to declare that he cannot do so unless by good fortune he could happen to catch him cursing. Both Harpax[2] and Mephistophiles[3] suggest to their victims that they have power to destroy their enemies, but neither of them is able to exercise it. Faust can torment, but not kill, his would-be murderers; and Springius and Hircius are powerless to take Dorothea's life. In the latter case it is distinctly the protection of the guardian angel that limits the diabolic power; so it is not unnatural that Gratiano should think the cursing of his better angel from his side the "most desperate turn" that poor old Brabantio could have done himself, had he been living to hear of his daughter's cruel death.[4] It is next to impossible for people in the present day to have any idea what a consolation this belief in a good attendant spirit, specially appointed to guard weak mortals through life, to ward off evils, and guide to eternal safety, must have been in a time when, according to the current belief, any person, however blameless, however holy, was liable at any moment to be possessed by a devil, or harried and tortured by a witch.

[Footnote 1: Act II. sc. i.]

[Footnote 2: The Virgin Martyr, Act III. sc. iii.]

[Footnote 3: Dr. Faustus, Act I. sc. iii.]

[Footnote 4: Oth.e.l.lo, Act V. sc. ii. 204.]

79. This leads by a natural sequence to the consideration of another and more insidious form of attack upon mankind adopted by the evil spirits.

Possession and obsession were methods of a.s.sault adopted against the will of the afflicted person, and hardly to be avoided by him without the supernatural intervention of the Church. The practice of witchcraft and magic involved the absolute and voluntary barter of body and soul to the Evil One, for the purpose of obtaining a few short years of superhuman power, to be employed for the gratification of the culprit's avarice, ambition, or desire for revenge.

80. In the strange history of that most inexplicable mental disease, the witchcraft epidemic, as it has been justly called by a high authority on such matters,[1] we moderns are, by the nature of our education and prejudices, completely incapacitated for sympathizing with either the persecutors or their victims. We are at a loss to understand how clear-sighted and upright men, like Sir Matthew Hale, could consent to become parties to a relentless persecution to the death of poor helpless beings whose chief crime, in most cases, was, that they had suffered starvation both in body and in mind. We cannot understand it, because none of us believe in the existence of evil spirits. None; for although there are still a few persons who nominally hold to the ancient faith, as they do to many other respectable but effete traditions, yet they would be at a loss for a reason for the faith that is in them, should they chance to be asked for one; and not one of them would be prepared to make the smallest material sacrifice for the sake of it. It is true that the existence of evil spirits recently received a tardy and somewhat hesitating recognition in our ecclesiastical courts,[2] which at first authoritatively declared that a denial of the existence of the personality of the devil const.i.tuted a man a notorious evil liver, and depraver of the Book of Common Prayer;[3] but this was promptly reversed by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, under the auspices of two Low Church law lords and two archbishops, with the very vague proviso that "they do not mean to decide that those doctrines are otherwise than inconsistent with the formularities of the Church of England;"[4] yet the very contempt with which these portentous declarations of Church law have been received shows how great has been the fall of the once almost omnipotent minister of evil. The ancient Satan does indeed exist in some few formularies, but in such a washed-out and flimsy condition as to be the reverse of conspicuous. All that remains of him and of his subordinate legions is the ineffectual ghost of a departed creed, for the resuscitation of which no man will move a finger.

[Footnote 1: See Dr. Carpenter in _Frazer_ for November, 1877.]

[Footnote 2: See Jenkins v. Cooke, Law Reports, Admiralty and Ecclesiastical Cases, vol. iv. p. 463, et seq.]

[Footnote 3: Ibid. p. 499, Sir R. Phillimore.]

[Footnote 4: Law Reports, I Probate Division, p. 102.]

81. It is perfectly impossible for us, therefore, to comprehend, although by an effort we may perhaps bring ourselves to imagine, the horror and loathing with which good men, entirely believing in the existence and omnipresence of countless legions of evil spirits, able and anxious to perpetrate the mischiefs that it has been the object of these pages in some part to describe, would regard those who, for their own selfish gratification, deliberately surrendered their hopes of eternal happiness in exchange for an alliance with the devils, which would render these ten times more capable than before of working their wicked wills. To men believing this, no punishment could seem too sudden or too terrible for such offenders against religion and society, and no means of possible detection too slight or far-fetched to be neglected; indeed, it might reasonably appear to them better that many innocent persons should perish, with the a.s.surance of future reward for their undeserved sufferings, than that a single guilty one should escape undetected, and become the medium by which the devil might destroy more souls.

82. But the persecuted, far more than the persecutors, deserve our sympathy, although they rarely obtain it. It is frequently a.s.serted that the absolute truth of a doctrine is the only support that will enable its adherents successfully to weather the storms of persecution. Those who a.s.sent to this proposition must be prepared to find a large amount of truth in the beliefs known to us under the name of witchcraft, if the position is to be successfully maintained; for never was any sect persecuted more systematically, or with more relentlessness, than these little-offending heretics. Protestants and Catholics, Anglicans and Calvinists, so ready at all times to commit one another to the flames and to the headsman, found in this matter common ground, upon which all could heartily unite for the grand purpose of extirpating error. When, out of the quiet of our own times, we look back upon the terrors of the Tower, and the smoke and glare of Smithfield, we think with mingled pity and admiration of those brave men and women who, in the sixteenth century, enriched with their blood and ashes the soil from whence was to spring our political and religious freedom. But no whit of admiration, hardly a glimmer of pity, is even casually evinced for those poor creatures who, neglected, despised, and abhorred, were, at the same time, dying the same agonizing death, and pa.s.sing through the torment of the flames to that "something after death--the undiscovered country,"

without the sweet a.s.surance which sustained their better-remembered fellow-sufferers, that beyond the martyr's cross was waiting the martyr's crown. No such hope supported those who were condemned to die for the crime of witchcraft: their antic.i.p.ations of the future were as dreary as their memories of the past, and no friendly voice was raised, or hand stretched out, to encourage or console them during that last sad journey. Their hope of mercy from man was small--strangulation before the application of the fire, instead of the more lingering and painful death at most;--their hope of mercy from Heaven, nothing; yet, under these circ.u.mstances, the most auspicious perhaps that could be imagined for the extirpation of a heretical belief, persecution failed to effect its object. The more the Government burnt the witches, the more the crime of witchcraft spread; and it was not until an att.i.tude of contemptuous toleration was adopted towards the culprits that the belief died down, gradually but surely, not on account of the conclusiveness of the arguments directed against it, but from its own inherent lack of vitality.[1]

[Footnote 1: See Mr. Lecky's elaborate and interesting description of the demise of the belief in the first chapter of his History of the Rise of Rationalism in Europe.]

83. The history and phenomena of witchcraft have been so admirably treated by more than one modern investigator, as to render it unnecessary to deal exhaustively with a subject which presents such a vast amount of material for arrangement and comment. The scope of the following remarks will therefore be limited to a consideration of such features of the subject as appear to throw light upon the supernaturalism in "Macbeth." This consideration will be carried out with some minuteness, as certain modern critics, importing mythological learning that is the outcome of comparatively recent investigation into the interpretation of the text, have declared that the three sisters who play such an important part in that drama are not witches at all, but are, or are intimately allied to, the Norns or Fates of Scandinavian paganism. It will be the object of the following pages to ill.u.s.trate the contemporary belief concerning witches and their powers, by showing that nearly every characteristic point attributed to the sisters has its counterpart in contemporary witch-lore; that some of the allusions, indeed, bear so strong a resemblance to certain events that had transpired not many years before "Macbeth" was written, that it is not improbable that Shakspere was alluding to them in much the same off-hand, cursory manner as he did to the Mainy incident when writing "King Lear."