when the Saracen conquerors approached, fearing that the sacred relic might fall into their possession, took the house bodily in their hands, and, carrying it through the air, deposited it at its present place. In Bavaria they show us the brazen android which Albertus Magnus had so cunningly contrived as to serve him for a domestic, and whose garrulity had so much annoyed the studious Thomas Aquinas. In Alsace the abbot Martin shows us the following inestimable relics, which he had obtained for his monastery: a spot of the blood of Jesus, a piece of the true cross, the arm of the apostle James, part of the skeleton of John the Baptist, a bottle of milk of the blessed Virgin, and, with an ill-disguised envy, he told us that a finger of the Holy Ghost is preserved in a monastery at Jerusalem.
Everywhere we are told that the arch fiend and his innumerable legions of demons are forever hovering about us, seeking our present unhappiness and the future ruin of mankind; that we are at no time, and at no place, safe from them; that we cannot be sufficiently on our guard against them, for sometimes they assume the shape of a grotesque and hideous animal; sometimes they appear in the shape of our nearest and dearest relatives and friends; sometimes as a beautiful woman, alluring by more than human charms, the unwary to their destruction, and laying plots, which were but too often successful against the virtue of the saints; sometimes the Evil One assumes the shape of a priest, and, in order to bring discredit upon that priest's character, maliciously visits, in this saintly disguise, some very questionable places and allows himself to be caught in most disgraceful situations and environments. Can we imagine an invention more ingenius to hide the foul practices of the corrupt among the clergy?
Everywhere the clergy finds it a very profitable traffic to teach how the people might protect themselves against the Evil One. The sign of the cross, a few drops of Holy water, the name of the Virgin, the Gospel of St. John around the neck, a rosary, a relic of Christ or of a saint, suffice to baffle the utmost efforts of diabolic malice, and to put the Spirits of Evil to an immediate and ignominious flight.
There is not a Church, not a monastery that we enter, but that our blood is chilled at its fountain, as we gaze upon the ghastly paintings, representing the horrible tortures of hell, placed conspicuously for the contemplation of the faithful, or for the fear of the wicked, or for the gain of the clergy—for the heavier the purse the church receives, the surer the release. It is impossible to conceive more ghastly conceptions of the future world than these pictures evinced, or more hideous calumnies against that Being, who was supposed to inflict upon His creatures such unspeakable misery. On one picture the devil is represented bound by red-hot chains, on a burning gridiron in the center of hell. His hands are free, and with these he seizes the lost souls, crushes them like grapes against his teeth, and then draws them by his breath down the fiery cavern of his throat. Demons with hooks of red-hot iron, plunge souls alternately into fire and ice. Some of the lost are hung by their tongues, others are sawn asunder, others are gnawed by serpents, others are beaten together on an anvil, and welded into a single mass, others are boiled and strained through a cloth, others are twined in the embraces of demons whose limbs are of flames. But not only the guilty are represented suffering thus, but also the innocent, who expiate amidst heart-rending tortures the guilt of their fathers.[1] A little boy is represented in his suffering. His eyes are burning like two burning coals. Two long flashes come out of his ears. Blazing fire rolls out of his mouth. An 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, 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 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 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.
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
