of Contents
GROSS SUPERSTITIONS.—A CRUCIFIX THAT SHED TEARS OF BLOOD.—THE VIRGIN'S HOUSE CARRIED THROUGH THE AIR BY ANGELS.—SATAN IN THE FORM OF A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN.—SCENES IN HELL.—THE BURNING OF WITCHES.—A KING WHO CANNOT WRITE HIS NAME.—FEUDAL LORDS AS HIGHWAY ROBBERS.—THE SERFDOM OF THE PEASANTS.—RETURN TO CORDOVA.
We promised to make a careful examination into the influence which the ignorance of the clergy exercised upon the aspect of religion, upon the morals of the Church, and upon the social, industrial, political, moral and mental state of the people at large. We fear we made a rash promise. So heart-rending are the sights we see, if we are to give a faithful report, those unacquainted with the state of European civilization during the period which we are traversing, we fear, may accuse us of exaggeration, or worse still, may think that we, who belong to the race that suffered most during that period from the corruption of the Church, are animated by a spirit of revenge, and, therefore, find intense delight in holding so revolting a picture before our readers. But, happily, our readers are not composed of such. We are addressing intelligent people, men and women who know that our people have suffered too terribly and too unjustly from false accusations during many, many centuries, to render ourselves guilty of the same crime; men and women who know, that it is not from choice, but from historic necessity, that we contrast the social, and moral and intellectual state of Christian Europe during the Dark Ages, with the social and moral and intellectual state of Moorish and Jewish Europe of the same period, to appreciate the better the wonderful civilization of "The Jews and Moors in Spain."
Our search discloses to us the sad and terrible truth that ignorance, especially active ignorance, is the mother of superstition, and both the parents of fanaticism, and the offspring of this trio is deliberate imposture, extortion, corruption, crime, and these, in their turn, beget the world's misfortunes. This sad truth stares us in the face whatever church, cathedral, monastery or community we enter. Everywhere miracles and relics and idolatry. Everywhere the teaching and preaching of hell and Satan and witchcraft, and of the necessity of blind credulity and unquestioning belief. Every cathedral and monastery has its tutelar saint, and every saint his legend, and wondrous accounts are spread concerning the saint's power, for good or evil, often fabricated to enrich the church or monastery under his protection.
In Dublin we see the crucifix that sheds tears of blood. In Loretto we see the house once inhabited by the Virgin, and we were told, that some angels, chancing to be at Nazareth 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
