infant is represented roasting in a hot oven. It turns and twists, it beats its head against the roof of the oven in agony of its suffering.
Unable to gaze upon the scene of innocent suffering any longer, we turn from it, trembling with rage. We ask a priest, who chances to be near, what fiend could calumniate thus the good God? And smoothly he replies:
"God was very good to this child. Very likely God saw it would get worse and worse and would never repent, and so it would have to be punished much more in hell. So God,
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in his mercy, called it out of the world in its early childhood."[2]
We no longer wonder at the stupidity of the people, at the enormous wealth, and still greater power of the clergy, when we remember that the people were inoculated with the belief that the clergy alone could save them from such eternal tortures, and that money was the safest and most potent redeemer, and the never failing mediator for effacing the most monstrous crimes, and for securing ultimate happiness.
We turn from these frightful sights only to encounter more terrible scenes of misery. So far we had gazed upon purely imaginary suffering, now we encounter the real, the intensely real. Everywhere we see the sky lurid from the reflection of the autos da fe, on which thousands of innocently accused victims, suffer the most agonizing and protracted torments, without exciting the faintest compassion. Everywhere we hear the prison walls re-echo the piercing shrieks of women, suffering the tortures preceding their conviction as witches. And once, it was in Scotland, we were the unfortunate spectators of a sight which we never shall forget. While the act of burning witches was being preformed amidst religious ceremonies, with a piercing yell some of the women, half burnt, broke from the slow fire that consumed them, struggled for a few moments with despairing energy among the
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spectators, until, with wild protestations of innocence, they sank writhing in agony, breathing their last.
And why are these women burnt by the thousands, everywhere, in Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Flanders, Sweden, England, Scotland and Ireland? Because they had entered into a deliberate compact with Satan. They had been seen riding at midnight through the air on a broomstick or on a goat. They had worked miracles thus infringing upon the monopoly of the saints—or had afflicted the country with comets, hailstorms, plagues, or their neighbors with disease or barrenness. And who invents so malicious a falsehood? Often the victims themselves, for, suspected or accused of witchcraft they are at once subjected to tortures, to force a confession of their guilt, and these are so terrible, that death is a release, and so they confess, whatever the witch-courts want them to confess. Many a husband cuts thus the marriage tie which his church had pronounced indissoluble. Many a dexterous criminal directs a charge of witchcraft against his accuser, and thus escapes with impunity.
Everywhere we find the whole body of the clergy, from pope to priest, busy in the chase for gain; what escapes the bishop is snapped up by the archdeacon, what escapes the archdeacon is nosed and hunted down by the dean, while a host of minor officials prowl hungrily around these great marauders. To give money to the priest is everywhere regarded as the first article of the moral code. In seasons of
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sickness, of danger, of sorrow, or of remorse, whenever the fear or the conscience of the worshiper is awakened he is taught to purchase the favor of the saint. St. Eligus gives us this definition of a good Christian: "He who comes frequently to church, who presents an oblation that it may be offered to God on the altar, who does not taste the fruits of his land till he has consecrated a part of them to God, who offers presents and tithes to churches, that on the judgment day he may be able to say: "Give unto us Lord for we have given unto Thee;" who redeems his soul from punishment, and finally who can repeat the creeds or the Lord's prayer."
Bad as we find their greed, we find their moral corruption indescribably worse. Void of every sting of conscience, drunken, lost in sensuality and open immorality. In Italy, a bishop informs us, that were he to enforce the canons against unchaste people administering ecclesiastical rites, no one would be left in the Church, except the boys. Everywhere, clergymen, sworn to celibacy, take out their "culagium," their license to keep concubines, and more than one council, and more than one ecclesiastical writer we find speaking of priestly corruption far greater than simple concubinage, prominently among whom they mention, Pope John XXIII, abbot elect of St. Augustine, at Canterbury, the abbot of St. Pelayo, in Spain, Henry III Bishop of Liege, and they enumerate the countless nunneries, that are degraded into brothels, and are flagrant for their frequent infanticides.
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There is scarcely a need for our reporting concerning the influence, which this moral depravity of the Church has upon the masses. We find that the ignorance and the corruption and the bigotry made the people fully as ignorant and corrupt and vicious. The pernicious doctrine already adopted in the fourth century, that it is an act of virtue to deceive and lie, when by that means the interests of the church might be promoted,[3] leads the people to the conclusion that nothing can be possibly wrong, which leads to the promotion of the Church's interests and finances. And so crimes are perpetrated, wrongs committed, deceptions practiced, vice indulged without a pang of conscience, or a throb of the gentler emotions. Ignorance deadens every finer feeling, and religion, instead, of elevating man's moral nature, crushes it by the opportunities it offers for canceling crime with money, and for saving the soul from eternal torture and damnation by increasing the clergy's opportunities for debauchery.
We next look for the intellectual accomplishments, but we look in vain. The masses are intensely ignorant. The clergy can not instruct them, neither would they, if they could. Knowledge among the masses would have seriously interfered with their all-controlling power, as it really did in later centuries. This ignorance is fully shared by the secular chiefs of the land. Kings repudiate book-learning as unworthy of the crown, and warlike nobles despise it as
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disgraceful to the sword. It is a rare thing, and not considered an accomplishment, to find a warrior who can read or write. To suppose that he can write is to insult him by mistaking him for an ecclesiastic. No less a personage than Philippe le Bel, the powerful monarch of United France who conducts foreign wars and exterminates the Templars, signs his name with the sign of the cross or a rude arrow head, as late as the thirteenth century. Let us not forget, that nearly three hundred years earlier in the world's history, we had found public schools, academies, universities, libraries, poets, artists, scientists and philosophers flourishing among the Moors and Jews of Cordova—had seen Al Hakem the Caliph, writing a digest on the fly-leaves of the contents of each of his books in his great library.
We next look for the Industries, and there is little to be found that can be honored with that name. A belief prevails among the people that the millenium, the end of the world, will set in, amidst terrible sufferings at the year 1000. This belief stifles industry, and property and wealth are turned over to the Church for the sake of the soul's release. Next come the Crusades and these sap Europe of the flower of its people, who leave by the thousands and hundreds of thousands (and of which numbers but few return), to keep the Moslems out of Jerusalem, while the aged and the infirm, the women and children, eke out a miserable existence at home, feeding on beans, vetches, roots, bark of trees—often horseflesh and mare's milk
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furnish a delicious repast. During the intervals between the various Crusades those few who return, are so accustomed to their roving and plundering life that it is impossible for them to settle down to mechanical or industrial pursuits.
The Jews devote themselves almost exclusively to the industries, and for this they suffer much. Commerce is not safe. The feudal lords descend from
