THE DEMONOMANIA OF THE MIDDLE AGES.

ORIGIN OF MAGIC AND SORCERY

From the day that Louis XIV. dissolved the Parliament of Rouen, which had condemned several persons in the Province of Vire to death for the crime of sorcery, but few sorcerers have been seen in France.

It was in 1682 that Urbain Grandier was tortured and burned alive for having launched a malediction against the Ursulines of Loudun.

A violent reaction occurred against the Inquisitors, theologians, and their accomplice butchers, thanks to the courageous intervention of eminent philosophers and savants, who were justly indignant at the crimes of the Roman Catholic priesthood. This reaction clearly demonstrated the fact that the innumerable victims of religious intolerance in the Middle Ages were not sorcerers, nor possessed of the devil, nor minions of Hell. Psychologists and moralists claimed that the victims of these delusions were insane, persons suffering from semi delusions, subjects of monomania. Science classed these unfortunates into several groups, among which may be enumerated persons afflicted with hallucinations, demonomaniacs, erotomaniacs, subjects of lycanthropy, etc., without counting vampires, choreomaniacs, lypemaniacs, and others whose attacks are recognized by medical science.

The encyclopedists and their disciples declared themselves satisfied, inasmuch as psychological experts had done away with the absurd traditions of the Middle Ages as well as antique superstitions. The death penalty for demonidolatry was removed, but the doors of the insane asylum opened for its followers.

Could any better arrangement have been made at the present day? Let us take the history of this famous epidemic of demonidolatry of other days and examine the documentary evidence offered against those accused of the crime of sorcery, passing the testimony through the crucible of modern science, pathology, physiology, together with all observable symptoms, holding in view meanwhile modern neurological discoveries; let us strive, in a word, to solve this great psychological question, which has greatly agitated the human understanding for four hundred years past.

We believe what is, is the truth, and in order to best judge the facts narrated, it is well to first arrange our knowledge as to the psychological condition of Occidental populations during the Middle Ages, a condition that was only the continuation of the ideas and traditions of antiquity, modified by the fanatical prejudices of a new religion and by a cruel and barbarous social Constitution.

If history authorizes us, in fact, to conclude that the occult sciences have existed from the earliest periods of antiquity, that the people who brought learning from the Orient to the Occident, have at all times admitted the existence of genii, angels, and demons, it is easy to explain the action that such mysterious traditions would have on the ignorant minds of the peasantry of the Middle Ages, bowed under the yoke of slavery to feudal Lords and the clerical despotism of the Romish Church.

Let us interrogate these historical texts with impartiality, and analyze these ancient theogonies, which are, so to speak, the proces verbaux of the philosophic development of the human mind, and we shall see whether we can admit that mental diseases may prevail epidemically for several generations, like the pestilential maladies of the fourth century, for example.

We know that it was in India, the cradle of human genius, that the doctrine of supernaturalism, of good and bad spirits exerting an occult influence on mankind, was born. Ancient history shows such a belief goes back to antique times. Zoroaster, inspired by Ahura Mazda, the Omniscient, wrote, in the Zend Avesta, the text and commentaries of the religious law dedicated to the Aryas of India and Persia. This law had for its object the destruction of the cult of dews or demons, who infested the earth under human forms, and also to repress the naturalistic instinct of the most ancient people of Asia, by initiating them in a faith for Celestial genii.

The disciples of Zoroaster were the Magi; that is to say, the learned men of the day, but they modified the doctrine of the Prophet, which the Guebres alone preserved in its purity, with the fundamental doctrine of the dualism of light and darkness, represented by Ormazd and Ahriman, the spirit of the blest and the spirit of the damned.

The Chaldeans, celebrated from times of antiquity for their knowledge, not only of astronomy, but all other sciences, adopted the doctrines of the Zend-Avesta, and their Magi transmitted the same to the Egyptians, Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans, and finally to the Gauls, whose adepts were the Druids.

The science or Magic of the Chaldeans was only magnetism, somnambulism, and spiritism.

Says M. F. Fabart: “The Magi, according to certain bas reliefs exhumed in Oriental countries, knew the virtue of magnetic passes. We see figures with hands extended, influencing by their gestures the subjects, who, seated before them, have closed eyes.

“The Pythonesses and Sybills did not have the power of foresight until they had passed through the crisis of an artificial somnambulism, and we find passages in antique authorities where this imposed sleep is discussed.[48]

In one of my preceding works I have spoken of several very curious passages in the Pharsalia of Lucan, where he speaks of the oracles of the female magician Erichto and the responses of the Pythonesses in the Temple of Delphi to the inquiries of Appius. Cassandra, priestess to Apollo in the tragedy of Agamemnon, by Seneca the tragedian, is a perfect type of the hypnotizable hysteric, and, if the poet does not describe the methods followed by the priests of the temple in order to magnetize their subjects, we find them noted by other Latin authors in terms so explicit as to leave no doubt as to their knowledge of magnetic passes (hypnotism).

Says Cœlius Aurelianus: “We make circular movements with the hands before the eyes of the patient. Under our gaze the subject follows the movements of our hands, the eyes blinking.” It is while giving the treatment for catalepsy that the Roman physician, the contemporary of Galen, initiates us in magnetic practice. After giving a description of the neurosis, which he characterizes by prostration, immobility, rigidity of neck, loss of voice, stupor of the senses, widely opened eyelids, fixity of the eyes and ocular expression, the Latin author teaches us how to relieve the disease and partially waken the movement, senses, and intelligence of the patient; and he magnetizes, as is clearly indicated in the following lines: “Atque ita, si ante oculos eorum quisquam digitos circum moveat, palpebrant ægrotantes, et suo obtutu manuum trajectionem sequuntur; vel si quicquam profecerint etiam toto obtutu converso attendunt; et inclamati, respicientes lacrymantur nihil dicentes, sed volentium respondere vultum æmulantes.”[49]

The precepts of Zoroaster were differently modified among ancient people. Moses, who wished the glory of being the great prophet of Israel, wrote the law of Jehovah and abjured the Magi, by whom he had been initiated. The Hebrews meantime preserved the Mazadean religion in memory; they created magic. Ahriman became Astaroth, Beelzebub, Asmodeus and other demons, who had for interpreters the Pythonesses and Prophetesses (mediums). Ormazd was transferred into a legion of angels and archangels, who appeared to men to make prophecies. Presently the Jewish magicians invented the Kabbala, occult science, by which, in pronouncing certain words, they performed miracles and submitted supernatural powers to the caprices of the human will; they were above all necromancers.

The occult sciences of the ancients, necromancy and magic, had, as will be observed, more or less connection with the phenomena of magnetism of the present day. Meantime necromancy resembled modern spiritualism, toward which the researches of present day magnetizers tend. The necromancers invoked the souls of the dead to know the future and the secrets of the present. The Jews pursued this study with much ardor, notwithstanding the prohibition of Moses, who wished them not to speak to wood. We know that the Pythoness (witch) of Endor evoked the spirit of Samuel before Saul on the eve of battle and predicted the King’s death. The grotto where this celebrated medium lived still exists, and she receives, it is said, the travelers who visit her from far and wide near Mount Tabor.

Magic was also known by the High Priests in Pharaoh’s court. Like the Magi of Medea and Chaldea they invoked the spirits and supernatural powers by methods and ceremonies consisting principally of gestures and songs.

Hermes Trismegistus, whom the Alchemists regard as their master, spread the science of occult magic. Following him we see the mystical doctrines of the Orient flourish at Alexandria with the founders of neoplatonism. These taught that the Goetie was the supernatural art which is practiced by the aid of wicked spirits, that the Magie produced mysterious manifestations with the assistance of material demons and superior spirits; that the Pharmacists controlled spirits by means of philters and elixirs.

In Greece and in Italy the celestial genii were believed in, and they multiplied to infinity, peopling the Olympus of Polytheism. Priests profited by the superstitious idea of the people who invoked the aid of the witches and sibyls who derived their wisdom from the Magi of the Orient. Following the example, the historians, philosophers and poets were apparently led to the belief in all the Genii, in the power of spirits and their intimate relations with men through the medium of seers, in a condition of frenzy or somnambulism (trance).

We know that the poet Hesiodus in his theogony, that Plato, from the time of his initiation with the Hermetic doctrines, that Aristotle in his philosophical works, all admit the existence of immaterial beings interesting themselves in the affairs of humanity. The Pythagorians, on their side, affirmed their power of controlling demons by keeping themselves in constant meditation, abstinence and chastity.[50]

During all times of antiquity, there were corporations of priests, philosophers, theosophists, thaumaturgists and other sects, who exercised the trade of invoking spirits by conjuring them with charms, by enchantments and witchcraft, and changing by their aid the laws of nature, to command the elements and accomplish other extraordinary feats. In order to do these prodigies they had recourse to cabalistic formulæ, indicated in conjuring books, or by incantations, magical circles, or simply by magnetic power.

Simon of Samaria, Circe, Medea, Plotinus, Porphyrius, Jamblichus, and the famous Canidie, so justly cursed by Horace, belonged to this clan of magicians, gnostics, enchanters and mediums, who acquainted the people with the occult arts of the magi of Chaldea. It is only necessary to study history to be convinced of this fact.

Damis, the historian and pupil of Apollonius of Tyana, has left us the biography of his master, the most remarkable thaumaturgist of antiquity. It is in this work that he shows that while Apollonius was lecturing on philosophy at Ephesus, he stopped in the midst of his speech and cried out to the murderer who, at the same moment, assassinated Domitian at Rome, “Courage, Stephanus; kill the tyrant!” Apollonius had sojourned long in India, and all his disciples have attested the marvelous things he could do. He cured incurable diseases and made other miracles that astonished his contemporaries who were partisans, like himself, of the doctrines of Pythagoras.

Porphyrius published the fifty-four treatises of his master Plotinus, the illustrious neoplatonist, a work in which we find all the ideas of contemporaneous experimental psychology and a mystical philosophy supported on extasy, contemplation and hypnotism—ideas which were again enunciated one day by the enchanter Merlin, Albertus Magnus, Pic de la Mirandolle, Lulle, Cornelius Agrippa, Count Saint Germain, Joseph Balsamo, Robert Fludd, Richard Price and the freres of Rose Croix.

But, before these, there were others who believed they preserved the mysterious secrets of nature, the Illuminati, the seers and others not our immediate ancestors; the Druids in the dark forests of Gaul, along with the Druidesses. Both classes belonged to the Sacerdotal order, and only received the vestures of their sacred ministry after twenty years consecrated to the study of astrology, laws of nature, medicine and the Kabbala. Their theodicy taught the existence of one God alone and the immateriality of the spirit, called after death to be reincarnated an indetermined number of times up to the point when perfection was obtained; when a new, more divine and happy distinction was achieved. It admitted as a principal religious dogma the ascendant metempsychosis, as in the case of the first magi and the great Greek philosophers; also a multitude of genii and superior spirits intermediate between the Divinity and mankind.

The Druids were not only the priests, but dictators of Gaul; they were assisted in their functions by the Eubages, the soothsayers and sacrifices of their religion, by the Bards, the poets and heralds, and the Brenns, who participated in supreme power. Druidism was then an admixture of warlike ideas of the first inhabitants of Gaul, together with the doctrines imported by the Magii from Chaldea. So the Druids were the astronomers, physicians, surgeons, priests and lawgivers. The Druidesses, descendants of the Pythonesses and Sibyls of the Orient, spoke in oracles and predicted the future; their influence was considerable and often surpassed that of the Druid priests themselves, for they knew just as well how to use the Kabbala and magic; and besides, as virgins, consecrated depositaries of the secrets of God, they stood high in the eyes of the people. It is for this reason that the Druids and Druidesses were, under Roman domination, the defenders of national independence; but, forced to take refuge in dense forests far removed from the people, persecuted by the Romans, barbarians and Christians, they progressively became magicians, enchanters, prophets and charmers, condemned by the Councils and banished by civil authority.

It is at this epoch that evil spirits were noticed prowling around in the shadows of night and indulging in acts of obscene depravity. There were the Gaurics, beings the height of giants; the Suleves, beardless personages who were succubi, attacking travelers; and the Dusiens were incubi, demons who deflowered young girls during their maiden slumbers.

Saint Augustin accorded his belief to all these fables, which were retailed throughout the country, affirming that we have no right to question the existence of these demons or libertine spirits, which make impure attacks on persons while asleep. (Hanc assidue immunditiam et tentare et efficere,—Saint Augustin, in his “City of God.”)

Decadence slowly ensued, so that in the seventh century Druidism disappeared, but the practice of magic, occult art, and the mysterious science of spirits were transmitted from generation to generation, but lessened in losing the philosophic character of ancient times. In a word, magic became sorcery, and its adepts were no longer recruited save in the infamous and ignorant classes of society. The adoration of nature and God, the immortality of the soul, the grand ceremonies held at the foot of gigantic oak trees, gave way to hideous demons, gross superstitions, witchcraft, and the most immoral abberations. Occultism still subjugated the masses, but the science had fallen into the hands of the profane and of charlatans.

THE THEOLOGIANS AND DEMONOLOGICAL JUDGES.

Magic, or the science of magic, then served as a basis, as we have said before, for mythology and legends and was noticeable in the dogmas of all religions, for, as Saint Augustin observes, “In order to penetrate the mystical senses of fictions and allegories, and the parables contained in sacred history, it is necessary to be versed in the study of occult science, of which numerals make part.”[51]

But from the Greek dæmon, or the Sapiens of Plato, Christianity made a demon, a fallen angel, who wished to people his empire with the souls of the unbaptized; he is borrowed from the Jews with Beelzebub, Asmodeus, Satan, and their numerous colleagues. After Jesus, who was tempted by the Devil, and who delivered those possessed by devils, we see the apostles and saints visited in turn by the angels of God and also by spirits of evil, who fight battles among spiritual armies. These are only visions, apparitions of angels or demons who are vanquished before the anointed of the Lord.

Mankind wished to participate in the honors and emotions of communicating with supernatural beings; it is for this purpose that humanity addressed magicians and practitioners of Occultism. So we see in the first ages of Christianity the Bishops were uneasy in regard to magicians by reason of the popularity of the latter, notwithstanding the peasantry had submitted to the dogmas of the Church.

Paul Lacroix, the learned bibliophile, cites as the most ancient monument made mention of in this connection, an aggregation of shadowy women collected for a mysterious purpose, who devoted themselves to making magical incantations; this fragment is gathered from the Canons of a Council which, he thinks, was held before the time of Charlemagne. It treats of aerial flights that these sorcerers made, or thought they made, in company with Diana and Herodias, i.e., “Illiud etiam non est omitendum quod quædam sceleratæ mulieres, retro post Satanam conversæ, demonum illusionibus et phantasmatibus seductæ, credunt et profitentur se nocturnis horis, cum Diana, dea paganorum, vel cum Herodiate et innumera multitudine mulierum, equitare super quasdam bestias, et multarum terrarum spacia intempestæ noctis silentio pertransire ejusque jussionibus velut dominæ obedire, et certis noctibus ad ejus servitium evocari.”[52]

Which, being freely translated, reads: “We must not forget that impious women devoted to Satan, were seduced by apparitions, demons and phantoms, and avowed that during the night they rode on fantastic beasts along with Diana, a Pagan goddess, or Herodias and an innumberable throng of women. They pretended to traverse immense space in the silence of the night, obeying the orders of the two demon-women as those of a sovereign, being called into their service on certain given occasions.”

We can understand from this that if Christianity silenced Pagan oracles, it did not authorize magicians to put the spiritual world aside. The clergy accepted the evidence of the witnesses of grace, but refused that of the profane, who were only inspired by demons; they recognized in the latter the power of giving men illusions of the senses, of cohabiting with virgins under the form of incubi and with men under the form of succubi,—demons who could insinuate themselves through natural orifices into all the cavities of the body, and possess mortals.

Theologians have described all the pains endured by those possessed,—pangs in their thoracic and abdominal organs which, made by the demons, forced their victims to speak, sing, move, to be in a condition of anæsthesia or hyperæsthesia, following the imp’s will; in other words, the possessed were subject to infernal action. To the worship of spirits the first Bishops of the Church substituted a foolish fear of demons.

From this exaggeration of the power of evil genii over man surged the silly terrors and superstitious fears of damnation, which were the starting-point of aberration among the first demonomaniacs. It was for these unfortunates that the clergy invented exorcisms and great annual ceremonies destined to deliver those possessed by demons, ceremonies at which the Bishops convened the people and the nobles to assist, in order to show the triumphs of the Church over Satan and his imps.

The theatrical arrangement of these assemblages certainly induced some apparent cures—making the faithful cry out “a miracle, truly;” but who does not know that all affections of the nervous system love to be treated at the hands of thaumaturgists? To invent demons to have the glory of defeating them and to deliver mankind from their influence,—such appears to have been the objective point of the primitive Christian Church. This was certainly a clever trick in theological magic, and, if the end did not seem to justify the means to critical philosophic eyes, we may admit, at least, that it was better to exorcise the possessed than to burn them alive at the stake, as was done some centuries later.

“This doctrine of demons was so intimately intermixed with the dogmas of this perfected religious system by the Fathers of the Church,” says Sprengel, that “it is not astonishing authors attributed many phenomena of nature to the influence of demons.” One of the most celebrated doctors of the Church, Origen, of Alexandria, in his Apology for Christianity, remarks: “There are demons that produce famines, sterility, corruption of the air, epidemics; they flutter surrounded by fogs in the lower regions of the atmosphere, and are drawn by the blood of their victims in the incense that the pagans offer them as their Divinity. Without the odor of sacrifice, these demons could not preserve their influence. They have the most exquisite senses, are capable of the greatest activity, and possess the most extended experience.”

Saint Augustin had already written that demons were the agents of the diseases of Christians, and attacked even the new-born who came to receive baptism.

The Church taught that these demons acted through the intermediary of fallen creatures who were in revolt against God and his holy ministers. Such were the sorcerers and female mediums, who were met among ruins, in rocky cavern, and in other hidden and obscure places. For a morsel of bread or a handful of barley such creatures could be consulted; one could demand from them the secrets of the future, instruments for revenge, charms to secure love.

Among these sorcerers there were old panderers, who knew, from personal experience, all practices of debauchery, and who gave the name of vigils to the saturnalia indulged in among villagers on certain nights, gatherings composed of bawds and pimps, to which were invited numerous novices in libidinousness. These sorcerers and witches also knew the remedies that young girls must take when they wish to destroy the physiological results of their imprudences, and what old men need to restore their virility. They knew the medicinal qualities of plants, especially those that stupified. Perhaps a few of these sorcerers discovered, from magical incantations, the epoch of deliverance from Feudal morals, the abolition of servitude, equality and liberty. One thing is certain, however, i.e., that the clergy saw nothing in them save enemies of the Church and religion, creatures who were dangerous to society and deserving only destruction, per fas et nefas, by exorcism, by fire—indeed, even by the accusations tortured out of insane persons.

Thus, Pope Gregory IX., in a letter addressed to several German Bishops in 1234, described the initiation of sorcerers as follows: “When the master sorcerers receive a novice, and this novice enters their assembly for the first time, he sees a toad of enormous size—as large, in fact, as a goose. Some kiss its mouth, others its rear. Then the novice meets a pale man, with very black eyes, and so thin as to appear only skin and bones; he kisses this creature, too, and feels a chill as cold as ice. After this kiss it is easy to forget the Catholic faith. The sorcerers then assemble at a banquet, during which a black cat descends from behind a statue that is usually placed in the center of the gathering. The novice kisses the rear anatomy of this cat, after which he salutes, in a similar manner, those who preside at the feast and others worthy of the honor. The apprentice in sorcery receives in return only the kiss of the master; after this the lights are extinguished and all manner of impure acts are committed among the assemblage.“[53]

This was the belief, then, of those who a few years later composed the “Tribunal of the Inquisition” and accepted the banner of Loyola, and shortly afterwards again a member of the congregation of Saint Dominick and professor of theology, Barthelemi de Lepine, convinced of the existence of demons and Demonidolators, showed himself to be a furious adversary of the sorcerers in a famous dissertation, which was immediately adopted by his co-religionists. He affirmed that “the possessed go to the sorcerers’ meetings in body or in spirit and have carnal intercourse with the devil; that they immolate children, transforming them into animals notably cats; that they have obscene visions, and it is best to exterminate them, for their number is growing legion.”

Barthelemi de Lepine, in speaking thus, only followed the traditions of the Fathers of the Church; of Saint George, Saint Eparchius, Saint Bernard, Innocent VIII., and of Antonio Torquemada, who were the historians of the incubi of their times, and launched anathemas against the possessed of the Demon of luxury.

The Jesuit father Costadau wrote, in his treatise De Signis, apropos of incubism: “The thing is too singular to treat lightly. We would not believe it ourselves had we not been convinced by personal experience with the Demon’s malice, and, on the other hand, find an infinity of writings of the first order from Popes, theologians, and philosophers, who have sustained and proved that there are men so unfortunate as to have shameful commerce and other things more execrable with such demons.”

Another Jesuit, Martin Antoine del Rio, published six books (Disquisitiones Magicæ) in 1599, in which his credulity attained the limit of fanaticism, thus making the good priest one of the most redoubtable enemies of demonomania. Such were the doctrines on which reposed the theocratical pretensions of the theologians.

It is not astonishing that the last years of the Middle Ages, during the time religious struggles reached their highest period of exacerbation, owing to the quarrels between the Court of Rome and the Reformation, witnessed the multiplication in the number of demonomaniacs to such an extent that the whole world commenced to believe in the power of demons. “At this unfortunate time,” remarks Esquirol, “the excommunicated, the sorcerers and the damned were seen everywhere; alarmed, the Church created tribunals, before which the devil was summoned to appear and the possessed were brought to judgment; scaffolds were erected, funeral pyres were lighted around stakes, and demonomaniacs, under the names of sorcerers and possessed, doubly the victims of prevailing errors, were burnt alive, after being tortured to make them renounce pretended compacts made with the Evil One. There was a jurisprudence against sorcery and magic as there were laws against theft and murder. The people, seeing the Church and Princes believing in the reality of these extravagances, were positively persuaded as to the existence of demons.”

No authority raised itself to protect these miserable possessed people; justice, philosophy, and science remained subjected to theology, becoming more and more the accomplices of an autocratic and ever-intolerant Church.

Among the magistrates, historians and publicists, who were the most ardent supporters of the Inquisition, we may mention J. Bodin, of Angers, who published, in 1581, a work entitled Demonomanie. He shows that the victims of demonomania enjoy perfect integrity of the mental faculties and are in every sense responsible, before Courts of Ecclesiastical Justice and Parliaments, for their impure relations with supernatural beings, and he logically concludes that all Demonomaniacs should be committed to the stakes and burnt alive. “Meantime,” says this amiable author, “we can deliver the possessed by exorcisms, and animals may be thus exorcised as well as men.” To the support of his thesis he then brings an immense collection of ridiculous stories, which are not supported by evidence. He says: “Those possessed by a demon can spit rags, hair, wood and nails from their mouths.” He cites the case of a possessed woman who had her chin turned towards her back, tongue pushed out of the mouth, a throat which furnished sounds analogous to the crowing of a crow, the chatter of a magpie and the song of the cuckoo. Finally, he pretends that the devil may speak through the mouth of the possessed and use all the idioms, known and unknown; that he can deflower young girls and give them voluptuous sensations, etc.

This work of J. Bodin is, in reality, the argument of a public prosecutor, presented with passion and prejudice, having all the erroneous arguments of the Inquisitors, so that the latter were more than satisfied at convincing the secular magistrates and fixing their jurisdiction as to the crime of sorcery. On the other hand, the same year that Bodin gave publicity to his inhuman side of the question, the Essays of Michel Montaigne appeared in Paris, in which this celebrated writer appealed to philosophy. He demanded that human life should be protected from fantastic accusations, and made that famous response to a Prince who showed him some sorcerers condemned to death: “In faith, I would rather prescribe hellebore than hemlock faggots, as they appear to be more insane than culpable.” Montaigne concluded one of his essays on this subject with the satirical remark: “It is placing a high valuation on human conjecture when we cook a man alive for an opinion.”

Meantime, Bodin had reasoned against Montaigne. But the one remained the ignorant prosecutor of the Middle Ages, while the other was an immortal philosopher, whom Colbert certainly quoted before presenting to Louis XIV. the famous edict of 1682, which forbade in the future “the cooking alive of sorcerers.”

Meantime, there was still a century to attain before one of the Prime Ministers of France put an end to all trials for sorcery, and during the intervening period there were other purveyors of the death penalty by the stake-burners of the Inquisition; among these were the celebrated Boguet, Criminal Judge of Bourgogne, and Pierre de l’Ancre, his colleague of Aquitanus, cited by Calmeil as the most fanatical judges of their day.

Boguet, in his Discours des Sorciers, wrote: “There were in France only three hundred thousand under King Charles IX., and they have since increased more than half as much again. The Germans prevent their growth by burning at the stake; the Swiss destroy whole villages at one time; in Lorraine the stranger may see thousands existing with but few executions. It is difficult to understand why France cannot purge itself of these creatures. These sorcerers walk around by thousands and multiply on earth like caterpillars in our gardens. I wish I could enforce punishment according to my ideas, for the earth would soon be purged of those possessed. For I fain would collect them all in one mass and burn them alive in a single bonfire.”

Pierre de l’Ancre, Councillor to the Parliament of Bordeaux, published in 1613 his Tableau de l’inconstance des mauvais anges et demons, and in 1622 his Incredulite et mecreance du sortilege pleinement convaincue. In these two works the author treats all questions regarding sorcery, and declares that in his capacity of judge he believes it a mistake to spare the life of any individual accused of magic, as he considers sorcerers as the enemies of morality and religion, and accuses them of having found means of “ravishing women even while they laid in the embraces of their husbands, thus forcing and violating the sacred oaths of marriage, for the victims are made adulterous even in the presence of their husbands, who remain motionless and dishonored without power to prevent; the women mute, enshrouded in a forced silence, invoking in vain the help of the husband against the sorcerer’s attack, and calling uselessly for aid; the husband charmed and unable to offer resistance, suffering his own dishonor with open eyes and helpless arms.

“The sorcerers dance around the bed in an indecent manner, like at a Bacchanalian feast, accoupling adulterously in a diabolical fashion, committing execrable sodomies, blaspheming scandalously, taking insidious carnal revenges, perpetrating all manner of unnatural acts, brutalizing and denaturalizing all physical functions, holding frogs, vipers, and lizards, and other deadly animal poisons in their hands, making stinking smells, caressing with lascivious amorousness, giving themselves over to horrible and shameful orgies.”

Thus says the Prosecutor of the Council of Bordeaux, but he fails to support his statements by a single material fact, not even one individual case being proven. His trials show nothing but a few poor demented women, who responded always in the affirmative to the obscene and indecent questions of the judges and prosecutors employed by the Most Holy Inquisition.

A sad thing philosophy registers celebrated names during this Age. We mention only those of Rene Descartes, Blaise Pascal, Nicholas Malebranche, Thomas Hobbes, Francis Bacon, Leibnitz, and the immortal Newton. Unfortunately these great geniuses could not take part in the struggle between the clerical party and free thinkers. Honored as scholars, their Governments never asked their advice on questions claimed to be under the control of religious orders. The clergy had all the latitude they desired in writing the history of demonology, and also the evidence wrung from those accused of sorcery—vague responses drawn out by fear, by torture, by suggestion imposed in the obscurity of a penitential tabernacle. A witness of veracity, as we have before stated, never gave testimony as to the conduct of the sorcerers at the secret vigils. Their invocations on initiation, their famous inunctions used on the body, with magical ointments while in a condition of absolute nudity; their equestrian position on broom sticks; their flying tricks up the chimney and their bewitched reunions when horned devils rode on their shoulders, are legendary recitals which could only be accepted by ignorant fanatics and judges firm in the Faith. How a man with the seeming intelligence of Prosecutor Bodin, who was delegated by the State, who wrote six works on The Republic and The Constitution—works which have been compared in point of ability as ranking with Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Law; how a publicist of talent could support such stories as we have mentioned in his work on sorcery is a matter of profound amazement. Yet, Bodin testifies as to his faith in the story of that peasant of Touraine “who found himself naked, wandering around the fields in the morning,” and who gave as an explanation of his conduct that he had surprised his wife the night before as she was making preparations to go to a sorcerers’ vigil, and that he had followed his better half, accompanied by the Devil, as far as Bordeaux, many leagues away. Bodin also believed the narration of that girl from Lyons “whom the lover perceived rubbing herself with magical ointment preparatory to attending a sorcerers’ vigil; and the lover, using the same ointment, followed his girl and arrived at the vigil almost as soon as she.”

As to that poor peasant who was found naked and alone in the field and forced to denounce his wife to the authorities, Bodin remarks impressively, “The woman confessed and was condemned to be burnt at the stake.”

Pierre de l’Ancre was never able to prove his stories by sentinels, sergeants, guards, or policemen, as to the appearance of the demon he described in his Traite sur les demons; a spirit that showed itself as a large blood-hound or as a wild bull. It is true that in another part of his book he demonstrates the changeable character of his Devil, and gives the following description, which methinks is more worthy the pen of an insane man rather than that of a magistrate: “The Devil of the sabbat (vigil) is seated in a black chair, with a crown of black thorns, two horns at the side of the head and one in the forehead with which he gores the assemblage. The Devil has bristling hair, pale and troubled looking face, large round eyes widely opened, inflamed and hideous looking, a goatee, a crooked neck, the body of a man combined with that of a billy goat, hands like those of a human being, except that the nails are crooked and sharp pointed at the ends; the hands are curved backwards. The Devil has a tail like that of a jackass, with which, strange to say, he modestly covers his private parts. He has a frightful voice without melody; he preserves a strange and superb gravity, having the countenance of a person who is very melancholy and tired out from overwork.”

This was the spirit of the lieutenants of justice called on by the Inquisitorial clergy to fix the penalty for the crime of sorcery. “Sorcery being a crime,” say they with the spirit of conviction, “consented to between man and the Devil; the man bowing to adore Satan, and receiving in exchange a part of his infernal power.”

According to this compact, “The demon unites carnally with the sorcerer and female medium likewise; these unite themselves with Satan, denying God, Christ and the Virgin, and profaning all objects of sanctity by their profane presence.

“They become zealots for evil and render eternal homage to the Prince of Darkness.

“They are baptized by the Devil and dedicate to his service all children born to them by nature.

“They commit incests, poison people, and bewitch and work cattle to death.

“They eat the carrion from the rotting bodies of hanged criminals.

“They enter into a Cabalistic circle laid out by the accursed one, and matriculate in a secret order which is engaged in all manner of outrages against society; they accept secret marks that affirm their complete vassalage to Satan.

“Finally, they repudiate all authority other than that of the master in the Cabala (Kabbala), and, abomination above all, they incite the people to revolt.”

Meantime, while the Judges and Inquisitors pursued all intelligent people with the most wicked determination, Leloyer published his monograph on specters,[54] whose doctrines are closely connected with modern Spiritualistic theories.

This celebrated Councillor wrote that the soul, the spiritual essence which animates the organism, may be distracted and separated from the body for an instant, as we see in cases of ecstacy.

Now, we know that this nervous phenomenon, which may be natural, when connected with catalepsy, hysteria and somnambulism, or provoked when it is produced experimentally on subjects in a hypnotic condition, almost always coincides with an acute moral impression and a suspension of one or more of the senses. It is during the duration of this phenomenon that the soul, according to Leloyer, performs far-off journeys,—not orthodox, however, for we are told that during the period of such ecstacies, following cataleptic immobility, seven of these ecstatics were burned alive at Nantes in 1549.

In another chapter, he adds that souls may, after death, impress themselves on our senses by taking fantastic forms. He supports this opinion by the incident relative to a daughter of the famous Juriscouncillor of the sixteenth century, Charles Dumoulin, who appeared to her husband and told him the names of assassins; and of the specter who informed the Justice of the crime committed by the woman Sornin on her husband, that the soul of Commodus appeared so often to Caracalla.

The author of the Spectres attributes to supernatural beings the frights experienced by certain persons who live in haunted houses. Every night they are awakened by the sound of noises,—blows resound on the floor and raps come on the partitions; every few minutes there are peals of ghostly laughter, whistling, clapping of hands to attract attention; these nervous persons see spirits and are startled at sudden apparitions of the dead; specters seize them by the feet, nose, ears, and even go so far as sit on their chests. Such houses are said to be the rendezvous of demons.

The persons spoken of by Leloyer are to-day known as mediums producing physical effects, and the phenomena observed centuries since are evidently the same as those investigated by William Crookes, with the collaboration of Kate Fox and Home.[55]

“In the ecstacy of sorcerers,” resumes Leloyer, “the soul is present, but is so preoccupied by the impressions that it receives from the Devil, that it cannot act on the body it animates. On awaking, such ecstatics may remember things they have seen, events in which they have assisted, as in the case when the soul temporarily abandons its earthly tenement.”

Meanwhile, it is but fair to observe that the author makes certain reservations; he admits that ecstacy and hallucination may be provoked by a pathological condition of the nervous system, and are not always the result of the work of demons. He also comments on a certain number of vampires remaining in a lethargic sleep, from a nervous condition, after returning from a sorcerer’s vigil, a fact which, according to Calmeil, was of a nature to throw the theories of the Councillors of the Inquisition into disfavor.

The theory of the author of Spectres resembles considerably, as will at once be noticed, that of the first Magii and the modern doctrine of Spiritualism. Leloyer, besides, has gathered a number of facts to support his affirmations; among others, he cites the observation given him by Philip de Melanchton, the learned Hellenist and author of the famous confession of Augsburg. This was a spiritual manifestation experienced by the widow of Melanchton’s uncle: One day, while weeping and thinking of the dear lost one, two spirits appeared to her suddenly,—“one habited in the stately, dignified form of her husband, the other specter in the garb of a gray friar. The one representing her husband approached her and said a few consoling words, touched her hand and disappeared with his monkish companion.”

Melanchton, although one of the chiefs of the Reformation, was still imbued with the ideas of the Romish Church; after some hesitation he concluded that the specters seen by his aunt were demons. The same phenomena have been observed by modern mediums; William Crookes, the celebrated London scientist, relates facts to which he has been witness which are even more extraordinary than the one we have just narrated.

Jerome Cardan, of Paris, the celebrated mathematician, renowned for his discovery of the formula for resolving cubic equations, solemnly affirmed that he had a protecting spirit, and never doubted the reality of this apparition. Cardan also tells how his father one evening received a visit from seven specters, who did not fear to enter into an argument with the learned old man.

Imagination, exalted by chimerical fear of demons, sees the work of these evil-doing spirits on every hand, in gambling, in sickness, in accidents, in infirmity, in all the ordinary accidents of life. The sorcerers are accused of attacking man’s virility by witchcraft. The victims say that some one has knotted their private organs (noue l’aiguilette). This pretended catastrophe in magic, the origin of which dates back to times of antiquity, may be classed among abnormal physiological effects under the influence of a moral cause, fear, timidity, and certainly the suggestion of a feeble mind.

Such are the sorcerers that Bodin accuses, perhaps not without reason always, since we see that impotency in some young melancholic subjects who appear easily impressed with fantastic notions.

“Sorcerers,” says Bodin, “have the power to remove but a single organ from the body, that is, the virile organ; this thing they often do in Germany, often hiding a man’s privates in his belly, and in this connection Spranger tells of a man at Spire who thought he had lost his privates and visited all the physicians and surgeons in the neighborhood, who could find nothing where the virile organs had once been, neither wound nor scar; but the victim having made peace with the sorcerer, to his great joy soon had his treasure restored.”

There was no need of this kind of witchcraft, pour nouer l’aiguilette, in a timid boy, already subjugated by fear of the devil. Certainly, if the sorcerers had ideas of that force which is known to-day as suggestion, they could very easily destroy the virile power of the subject by governing his will and thoughts, his physical and moral personality. When we can confiscate the physical anatomy of a man he is reduced to all manner of impotencies. Who will affirm that suggestion is not one of the mysteries of sorcery?

DEMONOLOGICAL PHYSICIANS.

After the theosophists, theurgists, and the priests, we will now interrogate the writings of the physicians of antiquity and of the Middle Ages, as to this question of spirits and their connection with the affairs of mankind.

We see that Galen is often drawn away by the beliefs of his time, to the most ridiculous prejudices and fancies, and that he is the defender of magical conjurations. He claimed that Æsculapius appeared to him one day in a dream and advised bleeding in the treatment of pleurisy by which he was attacked.

After Galen, Soranus of Ephesus used magical chants for curing certain affections. Scribonius Largus, a contemporary of the Emperor Claudius, indicated the manner of gathering plants, so that they might possess the strongest healing properties (the left hand must be raised to the Moon). Plants thus gathered cured even serpent bites. Archigenes suspended amulets on the necks of his patients. And although Pliny often declared that he wished “to examine everything in nature and not to speculate on occult causes” he reproduces in his works all the superstitious practices employed in medicine.

In the sixth century, Ætius, physician to the Court of Constantinople, acquired great surgical renown by the preparation of applications of pomades, ointments, and other topical remedies, in which superstition played a leading role.[56] Thus, in making a certain salve it was necessary to repeat several times in a low voice, “May the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob accord efficacy to this medicine.” If one had a foreign body in the throat it was necessary to touch the neck of the patient and say, “As Jesus Christ raised Lazarus, and Jonah came out of a whale, come out thou bone”; or, better still, “The Martyr Blase and the Servant of Christ commands thee to come out of the throat or descend to the stomach.”[57]

After Ætius, we see Alexander of Tralles indulge in the same follies. In the colic he bids us use a stone on which is represented Hercules seated on a lion, a ring of iron on which was inscribed a Greek sentence, and, on the other, the diagram of the Gnostics (a figure composed of two equilateral triangles); and he adds that sacred things must not be profaned.

Against the gout, the same Alexander of Tralles recommended a verse from Homer, or, better still, to engrave on a leaf of gold the words mei, dreu, mor, phor, teus, za, zown. He conjured, by the words Iao, Sabaoth, Adonai, Eloi, a plant he employed in the same disease. In quotidian fever he advised an amulet made of an olive leaf on which was written in ink, Ka Poi. A.[58]

In the thirteenth century, Hugo de Lucques said a Pater noster and other prayers to the Trinity to cure fractures of the limbs. But in the following century astrology replaced the magic of religious superstition. Arnauld de Villeneuve attributed to each hour of the day a particular virtue which influenced, according to the influence of the horoscope, the different parts of the body. According to Arnauld, we can use bleeding only on certain days when such and such a constellation is in place, and no other time; but the position of the moon more particularly needed attention. The most favorable time for phlebotomy was when Luna was found in the sign of Cancer; but the conjunction of the latter with Saturn is injurious to the effects of medicines, and especially of purgatives.[59]

His contemporary, Bernard de Gordon (of Montpellier), gives as a sure method of hastening difficult accouchments the reading of passages from the Psalms of David. He explains the humors of certain hours of the day in the following manner: the blood in the morning moves towards the sun, with which it is in harmony; but it falls towards evening, because the greatest amount of sanguification occurs during sleep. In the third hour of the day the bile runs downwards, to the end that it may not make the blood acid;[60] the black bile moves at the ninth hour and the mucus towards evening.

The efficacy of precious stones for bewitching, and many other superstitious ideas, were likewise noted by medical authors, notably Italian writers, as, for instance, Michel Savonarola, Professor at Ferrara, one of the most celebrated physicians of his age. In Germany, Agrippa of Nettesheim, philosopher, alchemist and physician, had a predilection for magic and the occult sciences, if we are to judge from his works published in 1530 and 1531, i.e., De incertitudianæ et vanitate scientiarum, De occulta philosophia, in which he mentions action induced at a distance and forsees the discovery of magnetism.

Like him, his contemporaries, Raymond Lulle, in Spain, and J. Reuchlin, published books on the Cabala (Kabbala), and, in Italy, Porta founded, at Naples, the Academy of Secrets, for the development of occult sciences, which are explained in his treatise De Magia Naturali.

At almost the same epoch, Paracelsus, Professor at Basle, claimed that he possessed the universal panacea; that he had found the secret of prolonging life, by magic and astrology, for he diagnosed diseases through the influence of the stars. After him, Van Helmont defended animal magnetism, and gave himself up to the study of occult science, in company with his student, Rodolphe Goclenius.

In the sixteenth century, Fernel, who, inasmuch as he was a mathematician and an astronomer, published his Cosmotheria, where he indicated the means of measuring a meridian degree with exactitude; his remarkable works on physiology (De naturali parte medicinæ, 1542), on pathology and therapeutics, which gave him the nickname of the French Galen. Fernel fully admitted the action of evil spirits on the body of man; he believed that adorers of the Demons could, by the aid of imprecations, enchantments, invocations and talismans, draw fallen angels into the bodies of their enemies, and that these Demons could then cause serious sickness. He compared the possessed to maniacs, but that the former had the gift of reading the past and divining the most secret matters. He affirmed that he had been witness of a case of delirium caused by the presence of the Devil in a patient, that which was denied by several doctors at the epoch.[61] He also believed in lycanthropy.... In the same century, another of our medical glories, Ambroise Pare, the Father of French surgery, also adopted the theory of the Inquisitors regarding sorcery in his works,[62] in which may be found his remarkable anatomical and surgical discoveries. We read the following quaintly conceived passage: “Demons can suddenly change themselves into any form they wish; one often sees them transformed into serpents, frogs, bats, crows, goats, mules, dogs, cats, wolves, and bulls; they can be transmuted into men as well as into angels of light; they howl in the night and make infernal noises as though dragging chains, they move chairs and tables, rock cradles, turn the leaves of books, count money, throw down buckets, etc., etc. They are known by many names, such as cacodemons, incubi, succubi, coquemares, witches, hobgoblins, goblins, bad angels, Satan, Lucifer, etc.

“The actions of Satan are supernatural and incomprehensible, passing human understanding, and we can no more understand them than we can comprehend why the loadstone attracts the needle. Those who are possessed by demons can speak with the tongue drawn out of their mouth, through the belly and by other natural parts; they speak unknown languages, cause earthquakes, make thunder, clear up the weather, drag up trees by the roots, move a mountain from one place to another, raise castles in the air and put them back in their places without injury, and can fascinate and dazzle the human eye.

“Incubi are demons in the disguise of men, who copulate with female sorcerers; succubi are demons disguised as women, who practice vile habits not only on sleeping, but wakeful men.”

“Ambroise Pare,” says Calmeil, “believed that demons hoarded up all kinds of foreign bodies in their victims’ persons, such as old netting, bones, horse-shoes, nails, horsehair, pieces of wood, serpents, and other curious odds and ends, and cites the wellknown case of Ulrich Neussersser.”

The celebrated surgeon concludes from this that “it was the Devil who made the iron blades and other articles found in the stomach and intestines of the unfortunate Ulrich.”

What would Pare have thought had he seen the strange objects so commonly found by modern surgeons in ovarian cysts? How many demons would it take to produce the numerous objects noticed at the present day?

Happily these demonological physicians accepted purely and simply the suggestion that demons could act on men, and abandoned the victims to the tender mercy of the theologians and their tools the lawyers. Yet, even in this time of atrocities there were a few courageous physicians who struggled for humanity as against ecclesiastical despotism. Let us quote, according to Calmeil, one Francoise Ponzinibus, who destroyed one by one all the arguments that served to support the criminal code against demons. It was this brave doctor who dared to write that demonidolatry constituted a true disease; that all the sensations leading the ignorant to believe in spirits who adored the Devil were due to a depraved moral and physical condition; that it was false that certain persons could isolate their souls from their bodies at night and thus leave their homes for far off places inhabited by demons; that the accouplement of sorcerers and all the crimes attributed to them could not be logically supposed but must be legally proven; that it was cruel and atrocious to burn demented people at the stake for witchcraft.

Let us also quote from Andre Alciat, another courageous physician, who dared accuse an Inquisitor of murdering a multitude of insane people on the plea of witchcraft. He considered the vigil (sabbat) of sorcerers as an absurd fiction, and saw in so-called possessed only so many poor demented women given over to fanatical delusions and wild dreams.

Paul Zacchias, the author of “Medico-Legal Questions” (Questiones Medico-legales), a work in which he shows himself to be as wise an alienist as Doctor of Laws. The avowed and open enemy of supernaturalism, he boldly denounced the cruelties committed against the demented.

Let us finally inscribe on the roll of honor, with our respects, the name of Jean Wier,[63] or rather of Joannes Wierus, physician to the Duke of Cleves, who studied in Paris, where he received the degree of doctor, and was afterwards the disciple of Cornelius Agrippa, a partisan of demonology. Like the latter, Jean Weir believed in astrology, alchemy, the cabala, sorcerers and female mediums; likewise in demons who possessed control of human beings through magic power. But in his works that he published in 1560 he proclaims the innocence of those unfortunates punished for witchcraft, and declares them to have been insane and melancholic; likewise asserting that they could have been cured by proper treatment. He declares that he is fully persuaded that sorcerers, witches, and lycanthropic patients who were burned at the stake were crazy people whose reason had been overthrown; and that the faults imputed to these unfortunates were dangerous to none but themselves; that the possessed were dupes to false sensations that had been experienced during the time of their ecstatic transports or in their sleep.

Weir[64] insisted that the homicidal monomania attributed to the inhabitants of Vaud should not be credited, and was not except by fools and fanatics; while the so-called vampires, whose blood was shed on the banks of Lake Leman, the borders of the Rhine, and on the mountains of Savoy, had never been guilty of crimes, nor murders especially, and cites cases of condemnation where the insanity or imbecility of the victims was incontestible. He declares, in general, that all sorcerers are irresponsible, that they are insane, and that the devils possessing them can be combatted without exorcism. “Above all,” says he to the judges and executioners, “do not kill, do not torture. Have you fear that these poor frightened women have not suffered enough already? Think you they can have more misery than that they already suffer? Ah! my friends, even though they merited punishment, rest assured of one thing, that their disease is enough.” Beautiful words, worthy of a grand philosopher. Born in the sixteenth century, he believed in magic and sorcery; but as a physician he pleaded for the saving of human life, and as a man he frowned down the crimes committed on the scaffold. “The duty of the monk,” says he, “is to study how to cure the soul rather than to destroy it.” Alas! he preached his doctrine in the barren desert of ecclesiastical fanaticism.

Although, less well known than those names just mentioned, we must not forget to note that group of talented men who contributed with Ponzinibus, Alciat, Zacchias and Jean Wier in the restoration to medicine of the study of facts, thus freeing the healing art of many speculative ideas derived from the Middle Ages; we allude to such men as Baillou, Francois de la Boe (Sylvius), Felix Plater, Sennert, Willis, Bonet, and many other gallant souls who assisted in freeing medicine from the religious autocracy that overshadowed it,—men who were the avant couriers of modern positivism.

Many of those who had preceded these writers had been learned men and remarkable physicians, to whom anatomy, clinical medicine and surgery owed important discoveries, but the majority of these were not brave enough to defend their intelligence against religious superstitions. In some instances, indeed, they were even the criminal accessories of the theologians and inquisitors. In acting in adhesion to Demonological ideas, their very silence on grand psychological questions evidences their weakness,—we are sorry to say this,—and lowers them from the high position of humanitarians; the masses of the people of the Middle Ages owed the majority of their medical savants nothing on the score of liberty of conscience.

THE BEWITCHED, POSSESSED, SORCERERS AND DEMONOMANIACS.

In order to fully comprehend the Demonomania of the Middle Ages, it is necessary to previously analyze the different elements composing the medical constitution of the epoch, and, investigate under what morbid influences such strange neuroses were produced.

These influences, we shall find from thence, in the state of intellectual and moral depression provoked by the successive pestilential epidemics, which, from the sixth century decimated the population of Western Europe; in the disposition of the human mind towards supernaturalism, which had invaded all classes of society; in the terrors excited by the tortures of an ever flaming and eternal hell; in the fright, caused by the cruel and atrocious decisions of brutal Inquisitors, and their fanatical tools, the officers of the law. We find too, that a frightful condition of misery had weakened the inhabitants of city and country, morally and physically, inducing a multitude of women to openly enter into prostitution for protection and nutrition, owing to the iniquity of a despotic regime; then too, there were added bad conditions of hygiene and moral decadence, so that intelligence was sapped and undermined, together with a breaking down of the vitality of the organism.

In the recital of the miseries of the Middle Age, made by a master hand, by an illustrious historian, who bases his assertions on antique chronicles whose veracity cannot be questioned, we read the following: “Society was impressed with a profound sentiment of sadness, it was as though a pall of grief covered the generation; the whole world given over to plagues; the invasion by barbarians; horrible diseases; terrible famines decimating the masses by starvation; violent wind storms; greyish skies with foggy days; the darkness of night casting its shroud everywhere; a cry of lamentation ascends to Heaven through all this gruesome period. That sombre witness, our contemporary Glaber, fully indicates the position of society devoured by war, famine and the plague. It was thought that the order of seasons and the laws of the elements, that up to that period governed the world, had fallen back into the original chaos. It was thought that the end of the human race had arrived.”[65]

When the epidemic of Demonomania attacked the earth, at the end of the fifteenth century, more than ten generations had undergone the depressive action of the superstitions and false ideas spread broadcast by religion. Heredity had prepared the earth, the human mind being in an absolute condition of receptivity for all pathological actions. The education of children was confined to teaching them foolish doctrines, diabolical legends, mysterious practices that weakened their judgments. With the progression, from childhood to majority, a vague sentiment of uneasiness was experienced with a constant preoccupation on the subject of conscience and sin. In full adult age, as we have observed, came religious monomania, with acute sexual excitement, and persistent erotic ideas.

Arriving at this phase of the situation, some became theomaniacs, others demonomaniacs, saying they were possessed by sorcery, under the influence of genesic and other senses, with psychal hallucinations, and in some cases, psycho-sensorial illusions. These fictitious perception were produced either through the influence of the mind, assailed by supernatural conceptions, or by morbid impressions transmitted most often by the great sympathetic, or, finally, by an unknown action arising from the exterior.

Under the influence of these hallucinations, which manifested themselves in a state of somnambulism, or during physiological sleep, the recollection persisting to the after awakening, the Demonomaniac responded to those asking questions, that he had heard the confused noises made by the sorcerers at their vigil, had heard also the conversation of the devils, and had seen scenes of the wildest prostitution enacted by the demons; that fantastic animals were perceived; that strange odors of a diabolical nature, the savor of rotten meat, and corrupt human flesh, tainted blood of new born babes, and other noisome things had been smelled; that these effluvias were horrible, repulsive, nauseating, combined with the stink of sorcerers and the sulphurous vapors of magical perfumes; that he felt himself touched by supernatural beings who had the lightness of smoke or mist, and wafted away in the air. The hallucinations of the genital senses had led him to believe he had carnal connection, always of a painful nature, with succubi. When the victim to these delusions was a woman, she had the impression of having been brutally violated or deflowered, and some women declared they oftentimes experienced the voluptuous sensations of an amorous coition.

These hallucinations developed one after the other; those belonging to the anesthetized class, coming first, those belonging to the genesic class, coming last. The complexity of their symptoms produced what we call dedoublement, or a dual personality. Those possessed, claimed to be in the power of a demon, who entered their body by one of the natural passages, sporting with their person, placing itself in apposition with any place in their organism, proposing all sorts of erotic acts, natural and unnatural, whispering shameless propositions in their ears, blasphemy against God, forcing them to sign a contract with the Devil in their own blood.

The nervous state in which such weak minded creatures were found, victims to nocturnal hallucinations, insensibly induced a species of permanent somnambulism, during which they acquired a particularly morbid personality. They affirmed themselves to be sorcerers possessed by demons. When this personality disappeared, and the patient returned to a normal condition, a simple suggestion was all sufficient to cause the reappearance of the hallucination. This explains why so many individuals accused of sorcery, denied at first what they afterwards affirmed. When the Judge demanded with an air of authority, what they had done at the witch meeting, (vigil), they entered into a most precise recital of minute details, and all the circumstances surrounding the nocturnal reunions of demons and their victims; and, by reason of this crazy avowal, or so called confession were burned at the stake for participation in diabolical practices.

In the Chronicles of Enguarrand, of Monstrelet, a truthful and trustworthy historian of the incidents of his time, we find a description of the famous epidemics of sorcery in Artois, which caused such a multitude of victims to be burnt at the stake, by order of the Inquisition. The facts recounted by this celebrated writer support the interpretations we have given to these phenomena. He expresses himself as follows:

“In 1459, in the village of Arras, in the country of Artois, came a terrible and pitiable case of what we named Vaudoisie. I know not why.” “Those possessed, who were men and women, said that they were carried off every night by the Devil, from places where they resided, and suddenly found themselves in other places, in woods or deserts, when they met a great number of other men and women, who consorted with a large Devil in the disguise of a man, who never showed his face. And this Demon read, and prescribed laws and commandments for them, which they were obliged to obey; then made his assembled guests kiss his buttocks; after which, he presented each adept a little money, and feasted them on wines and rich foods, after which the lights were suddenly extinguished, and strange men and women knew each other carnally in the darkness, after which they were suddenly wafted through space, back to their own habitations, and awakened as if from a dream.

“This hallucination was experienced by several notable persons of the city of Arras, and other places, men and women, who were so terribly tormented, that they confessed, and in confessing, acknowledged that they had seen at these witch reunions many prominent persons, among others, prelates, nobles, Governors of towns and villages, so that when the judges examined them, they put the names of the accused in the mouths of those who testified, and they persisted in such statements although forced by pains and tortures to say that they had seen otherwise, and the innocent parties named were likewise put in prison, and tortured so much, that confessions were forced from them; and these too, were burned at the stake most inhumanely.

“Some of those accused who were rich and powerful escaped death by paying out money; others were reduced into making confessions on the promise that in case they confessed their lives and property would be spared. Some there were indeed who suffered torments with marvelous patience, not wishing to confess on account of creating prejudice against themselves; many of these gave the Judges large bribes in money to relieve them from punishment. Others fled from the country on the first accusation, and afterwards proved their perfect innocence.”[66]

Calmeil considers this narrative of so-called sorcery as a delirium, prevailing epidemically in Artois, where “many insane persons were executed,” although he is forced to add: “these facts lead us to foresee what misfortunes pursued the false disciples of Satan in former times.”

These neuroses of the inhabitants of Artois had already been observed, almost half a century previous, among a class of sectarians by the name of the Poor of Lyons. These people were designated in the Romanesque tongue as faicturiers, the word faicturerie meaning sorcerer, or one who believes in magic. Demonomania then evidently dated back to the very commencement of the Middle Ages.

The judgment of the tribunals of Arras, which condemned the sorcerers of Artois to be burned alive at the stake, is a curious document in old French, which merits a short notice at least, for it is supported on the following considerations, which were accepted as veracious, although merely the delirious conceptions of ignorant peasants:

“When one wished to go to the witch reunion (vigil), it was only necessary to take some magical ointment, rubbed on a yard stick, and also a small portion rubbed on the hands. This yard stick or broomstick placed between the legs, permitted one to fly where he willed over mountain and dale, over sea and river, and carried one to the Devil’s place of meeting, where were to be found tables loaded down with fine eatables and drinkables. There was also the Devil himself, in the form of a monkey, a dog or a man, as the case might be, and to him one pledged obedience and rendered homage; in fact one adored the Devil and presented unto him his soul. Then the possessed kissed the Devil’s rear—kissing it goat fashion in a butting attitude. After having eaten and taken drink, all the assemblage assumed carnal forms; even the Devil took the disguise of man or sometimes woman. Then the multitude committed the crime of sodomy and other horrible and unnatural acts—sins against God that were so wholly contrary to nature that the aforesaid Inquisitor says he does not even dare to name, they are too terrible and wicked ever to mention to innocent ears, crimes as brutal as they were cruel.”[67]

Among these sorcerers there was a poet, a painter and an old Abbot, who passed for an amateur in the mysteries of Isis. Perhaps the Inquisition pursued such individuals as sorcerers and heretics, knowing them to be given over to debauchery. Similar things occurred as before said very early in the Middle Ages.([68])

As also before mentioned, there were demons who cohabited with women at night, and sometimes with men, called incubi and succubi, following as they were active, (incubare, to lie upon), or passive, (sub cubare, to lie under).

Calmeil has written, that virgins dedicated to chastity by holy laws were frequently visited by these demons, disguised in the image of Christ, or of an angel, or seraphim. Sometimes the Devil took the form of the Holy Virgin, and attempted to seduce young monks from paths of piety. “Having impressed the victims with the power of beauty,” says the sage alienist,([69]) “the wicked demon then got into the bed of the young girl, or young man, as the case might be, and sought to seduce them through shameful practices. The Gods, so say the ancients, often sought the society of the daughters of Princes; these pretended Gods were nothing but demons. A Devil possessed Rhea, under the form of Mars, and this succubus passed for Venus the day Anchises thought he cohabited with the Godess of beauty.

“The demon incubi accosted by preference fallen women, under the form of a black man, or goat. From times immemorial, damned spirits have attacked certain females, under the form of lascivious brutes. Hairy satyrs or shags, fauns and sylvains were only disguised incubi.

The connections between the possessed and incubi were often accompanied by a painful sensation of compression in the epigastric region, with impossibility of making the least movement, the victim could not speak or breathe. She had all the phenomena noticeable in an attack of nightmare. Meantime, some had different sensations. A nun of Saint Ursula, named Armella, said that she seemed “always in company with demons who tempted her to surrender her honor. During five months, while this combat lasted, it was impossible to sleep at night, by reason of the specters, who assumed varied and monstrous shapes.”[70] This virtuous nun preserved her chastity notwithstanding the frightful ordeal.

Angele de Foligno accused the incubi, says Martin del Rio, of beating her without pity, of putting fire in her generative organs, and inspiring her with infernal lubricity. There was no portion of her body that was not bruised by the attack of these demons, and the lady was not able to rise from her bed.

Another nun, named Gertrude, cited by Jean Wier, avowed that from the age of fourteen years, she had slept with Satan in person, and that the Devil had made love to her, and often wrote her letters full of the most tender and passionate expressions. A letter was found in this poor nun’s cell, on the 25th of March, 1565. This amorous epistle was full of the details of the Demon’s nocturnal debaucheries.

Bodin, in his “Demonomania” gives the observation of Jeanne Hervillier, who was burned alive, by sentence of the Parliament of Paris. She confessed to her Judges, that she had been presented to the Devil, by her grandmother, at the age of twelve years. “A Devil in the form of a large black man, who dressed in a black suit and rode a black horse. This Devil had carnal intercourse with her, the same as men have with women, only without seed. This sin had been continued every ten, or fifteen days, even after she married and slept with her husband.”

This same author reports many instances of the same kind. Among others, that of Madelaine de la Croix, Abbess of a nunnery in Spain, who went to Pope Paul III., confessing, that from the age of twelve years, she had relations with a demon, in the form of a Moor, and, that for more than thirty years this commerce had been continued. Bodin firmly believes, that this nun had been presented to Satan, “from the belly of her mother,” and affirms that “such copulations are neither illusions, nor diseases.” In his work, he also gives extracts of the interrogatories put to the Sorcerers of Longni, in the presence of Adrien de Fer, Lieutenant General of Laon. These sorcerers were condemned to be burnt at the stake, for having commerce with incubi. He mentions Marguerite Bremond, who avowed that she had been led off one evening, by her own mother, to a reunion of Demons, and “found in this place six devils in human shape, but hideous to behold. After the demon dance was finished, the devils returned to the couches with the girls, and one cohabited with her for the space of half an hour, but she escaped conception, as he was seedless.”

One of the distinctive characters of demons, was their infectious stink, which exhaled from all portions of the body. This odor attributed to the Devil was an hallucination to the sense of smell which entered, like those of the genesic sense, into all the complex hallucinations of Demonomania.

Examples of men cohabiting with demons, are cited by many authors of the Middle Ages. Gregory of Tours has left us the record of Eparchius, Bishop of Auvergne, who cohabited with succubi.

Jerome Cardan, physician and Italian mathematician, tells of a priest who cohabited for over fifty years, with a demon disguised as a woman.

Pic de Mirandolle, relates how another priest had commerce for over forty years with a beautiful succubus, whom he called Hermione. Bodin recounts the story of Edeline, the Prior of a religious community in Sorbonne. An adversary of Demonomaniacal doctrines, Edeline was accused by the theologians of defending demons. Before the Tribunal the Prior declared that he had been visited by Satan, in the form of a black ram, and had prostituted his body to an incubus, and only obeyed his master in preaching that sorcery was a chimerical invention. “Although the proof furnished by the registers of the Tribunal of Poitiers,” remarks Calmeil, “leaves no doubt as to the alienation of the intellectual faculties at the moment of his trial, Edeline was none the less condemned to perpetual seclusion from the world.”

As another striking example of hallucination, bearing upon this question of incubism, Guibert de Nogent tells of a monk, “who was sick, and retained the services of a Jew doctor. In exchange for health, the aforesaid physician, demanded a sacrifice. ‘What sacrifice?’ asked the monk. ‘The sacrifice of that which is the most precious to men,’ answered the Jew. ‘What may that be?’ inquired the monk. And the demon, for it was the Devil disguised as a doctor, had the audacity to explain. ‘Oh curses! Oh shame! to require such a thing of a priest’—but the victim, nevertheless, did what was asked. It was the denial of Christ and the true faith.”

Like psycho-sensorial hallucinations of the other senses, that of the genesic sense may assume the erotic type of disease, and is due undoubtedly, in some men, to a repletion of the spermatic vesicules. It is this that Saint Andre, physician in ordinary to Louis XIV., gives as an explanation of incubism. “The incubus,”[71] says this writer, “a chimera that had for its foundation only a dream, an over excited imagination, too often a longing after women; artifice had no less a part in the creation of the incubus,—a woman, a girl, only a devotee in name, already long before debauched, but desiring to appear virtuous to hide her crime, passes off the offenses of some lover as the act of a demon; this is the ordinary explanation. In this artifice the woman is often aided by the suggestions of the man—a man who has heard succubi speaking to him in his sleep, usually sees most beautiful women in his dreams, which, under such circumstances, are often erotic.”

It is certain that an ardent imagination and exaggerated sexual appetite have played a leading role in the history of incubi, but, meantime, there may be exceptions.

Nicholas Remy, Inquisitor of Lorraine, has given a description of impurities committed between demons and sorcerers, according to the testimony given by those possessed.[72] Fortunately, he has only given a Latin version of what they have told him. He states: “Hic igitur, sive vir incubet, sive succubet fœmina, liberum in utroque naturæ debet esse officium, nihilque omnino intercedere quod id vel minimum moretur atque impediat, si pudor, metus, horror, sensusque, aliquis acrior ingruit; il icet ad irritum redeunt omnia e lumbis affœaque prorsus sit natura.”

Then comes the sentence of the four girls of Vosges, according to the confessions, who were named Nanette, Claudine, Nicola, and Didace, and of whom Nicholas Remy, fortunately for the masses of the profession, only speaks in Latin, lest modesty be shocked at the narration. “Alexia Drigæa recensuit doémoni suo pœnem, cum surrigebat tentum semper extitisse quanti essent subices focarii, quos tum forte præsentes digito demonstrabat; scroto ac coleis nullis inde pendentibus, etc.” (We forbear from further quotation and for fuller particulars refer the reader to the original.)

Were these girls attacked by a malady, a complex hallucination of the senses that led them to firmly believe they were possessed or owned by a supernatural being who obliged them to abdicate their free will in his favor? Were they only, after all, prostitutes suffering from nymphomania? We can only insist that prostitution, or a low standard of morality, enters largely into the history of those possessed by incubi.

Aside from imaginary vigils (Sabbat), supposed to be frequented by those who were really insane, it is well to remember there were numerous houses of prostitution, conducted by old bawds and unscrupulous panderers, where nightly orgies occurred and scenes of wild debauchery were common. The real sorcerers boasted of their magic and their relations with demons, but, in reality, they knew nothing except the art of compounding stupefying drugs, of which they made every possible use. Having passed their entire lives in vice, their passions, instead of becoming extinct, were exalted by age. “Before ever becoming sorcerers,” remarks Professor Thomas Erastus, “these lamia (magicians) were libidinous and in close relation with the Evil One.”[73]

Pierre Dufour, the celebrated bibliomaniac, made a very lengthy and learned investigation as to the connection of sorcery with the social evil, and reaped a veritable harvest of facts, duly authenticated by the histories of trials for the crime of Demonidolatry, arriving at the conclusion that sorcery made fewer dupes than victims. Says Dufour: “Aside from a very small number of credulous magicians and sorcerers, all who were initiated in the mysteries served, or made others serve, in the abominable commerce of debauchery. The vigil offered a fine opportunity as a spot for such turpitudes. Such reunions of hideous companies of libertines and prostitutes was for the profit of certain knaves, and the sorcerers’ assemblage was patronized by many misguided young women, who fell from grace through libidinous fascination.”

Meantime, sorcery persisted always, notwithstanding judgments and executions. In the year 1574, on the denunciation of an old demented hag, eighty peasants were burned alive at Valery, in Savoy. Three years later nearly four hundred inhabitants of Haut-Languedoc perished for the same offense. In 1582 an immense number of so-called sorcerers were executed at Avignon. From 1580 to 1595 nine hundred persons accused of witchcraft were put to death.

In 1609, in the country of Labourde (Basses Pyrenees), the prisons were overcrowded with men, women and children accused of sorcery. Fires for stake-burnt victims lit up all the villages in the Province, and the courts spared no one. Many of these unfortunates accused themselves of believing in the demons of sorcery and having visited diabolical gatherings (vigils), where they had prostituted themselves to incubi. Others, to whom the death penalty was meted out, were innocent persons who had been informed against, but these, too, although denying all charges, were condemned to be burnt alive.

The same year some of the inhabitants of the country of Labourde, who had sought refuge in Spain, were accused of having carried demons into Navarre. Five of these unfortunates were burnt at the stake by order of the Inquisition, one woman being strangled and burned after her death. Even bodies were exhumed to be given to the flames. Eighteen persons were permitted to make penance for their alleged sorceries.

During two years, 1615 and 1616, twenty cases of Demonidolatry were punished in Sologne and Berry; these persons were accused of being at a vigil, without having been anointed with frictions however. An old villain, aged seventy-seven years, named Nevillon, pretended to have seen a procession of six hundred people, in which Satan took the shape of a ram, or buck, and paid the sorcerers eight sous, for the murder of a man, and five sous for the murder of a woman. They accused him of having killed animals by the aid of his bewitchings. Nevillon was hung along with those he accused. Another peasant, by the name of Gentil Leclercq, avowed that he was the son of a sorcerer, that he had been baptized at the vigil, by a demon called Aspic; he was condemned to be hanged, and his body was burnt. The same it was in the case of a man called Mainguet and his wife, together with one Antoinette Brenichon, who asserted they had all three visited a witch reunion in company.

An accusation of anthropophagy was launched against the inhabitants of Germany, by Innocent VIII., in 1484, and a hundred women were also accused of having committed murders, and cohabiting with demons.

The Inquisitors inspired the story of Nider, on the Sorceries of the Vaudois. They found, according to the testimony of certain witnesses, that these Vaudois cut the throats of their infants, in order to make magical philters, which would permit them to traverse space to attend the vigil of the witches, (Sorcerers). Other persons accused themselves of cohabiting with demons; some pretended they had caused disasters, floods and tempests, by the influence they had through Satan. Many submitted to the most horrible tortures with an insensibility so complete, that the theologians concluded that the fat of the first born males procured this demonological faculty for bearing pain. This general anæsthesia permits us to affirm that these unfortunates were neuropathic.

It would be a difficult matter to establish the exact number of victims offered up to the fanaticism of the Inquisition. Already, in 1436, the inhabitants in the country of Vaud, Switzerland, had been accused of anthropophagy, of eating their own children, in order to satisfy their ferocious appetites. Some one said they had submitted to the Devil, and raised the outcry that they had eaten thirteen persons within a very short time. Immediately the Judge and the Prosecutor of Eude, investigated the story. Failing to obtain the proof of eye witnesses, they subjected, according to Calmeil, hundreds of unfortunates to the tortures of the rack, after which a certain number were burned at the stake. Entire families overpowered by terror, fled from home, and found refuge in more hospitable lands; but fanaticism and death followed them like a plague.[74]

The moral and physical torture, undergone by those who were suspected of this anthropophagical sorcery, made some of the victims confess that they had the power to kill infants, by uttering charm words, and that ointments made of baby fat gave them the power to fly through the air at pleasure; that the practice of Demonic science permitted them to cause cows and sheep to abort, and, that they could make thunder and hail storms, and destroy the crops of others; that they could create flood and pestilence, etc. This was the anthropophagical epidemic of 1436.

The same observations might be made regarding what was known as lycanthrophy, which always arose among the possessed and sorcerers; that is to say crazy people, especially those of the monomaniac type, accused themselves and others with imaginary crimes, in confessions made to judges. As an example, we can cite the case of the peasant, spoken of by Job Fincel, and also one mentioned by Pierre Burgot, of Verdun, who did not hesitate to assert themselves to be guilty of lycanthrophy. They were burned alive at Poligny, but the remains of the five women and children, whose flesh they pretended to have devoured, were never found. In order to transform themselves into wolves, they claimed to use a pomade given them by the Devil; and, while in a certain condition, they copulated with female wolves. Jean Wier has written long essays on this last case of lycomania, and thinks the malady of these two men was due to narcotics, of which they made habitual use; but Calmeil is inclined to consider, that in a general manner, lycomania is a partial delerium confined to homicidal monomaniacs. This appreciation of the case seems justified by the similar one of Gilles Gamier, who was convinced that he had killed four children, and eaten their flesh. He was condemned to be burnt at the stake at Dole, as a wehr-wolf, (loupe garron), and the peasants of the suburbs were authorized by the same order to kill off all men like him. But we must not conclude from this particular instance, that a general law existed on the subject.

In 1603, the Parliament of Bordeaux, thought itself liberal in admitting attenuating circumstantial evidence, in the case of a boy from Roche Chalais, named Jean Grenier, who was accused of lycanthropy, by three young peasants. In the trial, no attempt was made to find evidence, the accused confessed all that was desired, and he was sentenced to imprisonment for life, before which verdict was announced, the Court said, that having taken into consideration the age and imbecility of this patient, who was so stupid that an idiot or child of seven years would know better, it added mercy to the judgment.”

He was then one of the imbeciles of the village, such as we see in asylums for insane, whose presence we rid ourselves of by isolation in charitable institutions.

At the same epoch, in the space of two years, 1598 to 1600, we can count the number of poor wretches of the Jura, whose poverty compelled them to beg nourishment, and who were almost all condemned to death as Demonidolators and lycanthropes. Ready and only too willing to leave this world, these poor people answered all questions as to accusation in the affirmative, and went to death with the greatest indifference. The infamous prosecutor, Bouget, who was sent into the Jura as a criminal agent, boasted that he had executed alone more than six hundred of these innocents.

The Inquistorial terror then reigned supreme; and it was only with extreme difficulty, at that time, that a poor idiot, named Jacques Roulet, condemned to death as a lycanthrope by the criminal Judge of Angers, was placed in an asylum for idiots, by order of the Parliament of Paris; this, too, in the seventeenth century.

THE HYSTERO-DEMONOMANIA OF THE CLOISTER.

The demonomaniacal hysteria of the Cloister, of which we have enumerated a few examples of a most remarkable kind, was present, in the Middle Ages, in the form of an epidemic neurosis, characterized by complex disturbances of the nervous system between the life of relation and of organic life; that is to say, by functional symptoms dependent on the general sensibility of the organs of sense, the active organs of movement, and the intelligence. In our observations we shall consequently recognize:

Hyperæsthesia and spasm of the stomach and abdominal organs, in the hallucination of poisoning by witches.

Hyperæsthesia of the ovary and the uterus and vagina, from the hallucination of painful cohabitation with incubi.

Spasms of the pharynx and laryngeal muscles: coughs, screams and barks of the prodromic period to convulsive attacks.

Vaso-motor disturbances, in the cutaneous marks, which are attributed to the Devil, but are simply produced by contact with some foreign body.

Somnambulism, in the execution of movements (sometimes in opposition with the laws of equilibrium), in a lucid state of mind, outside the condition of wakefulness, with or without mediumistic faculties and the conservation of memory; in the perception of sensations, without the intervention of the senses; in sensorial hallucinations produced by a simple touch; in ecstasy, with loss of tactile sense and hallucinations of vision.[75]

Suggestion, unconsciously provoked in rapid modifications of sensibility, in alterations of motility, in automatic movements executed in imitation (one form of suggestion), or by the domination of a foreign willpower, and, in general, in the penetration of an idea or phenomenon into the brain, by word, gesture, sight, or thought.[76]

Catalepsy, in the immobility of the body, the fixity of the regard, and the rigidity of the limbs in all attitudes, that we desire to place them (a very rare phenomenon).

Lethargy, in the depression of all parts of the body, and a predisposition on the part of the muscles to contract.

Delirium, finally, in the impossibility of hoping to discern false from true sensations.

We find, after this, that in analyzing the principal symptoms of hystero-demonomania, we easily note the characteristics of ordinary hysterical folly; we see that it always attacks by preference the impressionable woman. She who is fantastic, superstitious, hungry for notoriety, full of emotions,—one who possesses to the highest degree the gift of assimilation and imitation,—the subject of nightmare, nocturnal terrors, palpitations of the heart; a woman fickle in sentiment, one passing easily from joy to sadness, from chastity to lubricity,—a woman, in a word, who is capable of all manner of deceit and simulation, a natural-born deceiver.

The attacks of delirium among hystero-demonomaniacs have always a pronounced acute character; but, although violent and repeated, they are liable to disappear rapidly, and are often followed by relapse. These attacks of delirium are observed:

1. Before the convulsive attacks, under the form of melancholia or agitation, with hallucinations of sight and hearing.

2. During convulsive attacks, in the period of passional attitudes, under the most varied forms, by gestures in co-ordination with the hallucinations observed by the mind of the patient; we often see such persons express the most opposite sentiments—piety, erotism, and terror.

3. After convulsive attacks, in the form of despair, shame, rage, sadness, with an abundant shedding of tears.

4. Without convulsive attacks; in that case, the delirium may occur at any period; it is masked hysteria, which has a very great analogy to masked epilepsy.

The delirium of these patients, en resume, has for essential characteristics, exaltation of the intelligence, peculiar fixity of ideas, perversion of the sentiments, absence of will power, tendency to erotism. In a number of observations on delirium among hysterical cases in a state of hypnotism recently published, patients have been noted who believed that they cohabited with cats and monkeys, while some had hallucinations of phantoms and assassins—visions that resulted from complex hallucinations and have a certain similarity to those of hystero-demonomania observed in the Middle Ages; and, if the demons did not actually play the principle role in these hallucinations, it is because the imagination had not the anterior nourishment and belief in supernaturalism and no faith in the sexual relations of demons with mankind.

It was in 1491, about the time Jeanne Pothiere was on trial, that it was noticed that young girls in religious communities were subject to an epidemic mental affection, which led its victims to declare that they had fallen into the power of evil spirits. This species of delirium betrayed itself to the eyes of its observers by a series of strange and extravagant acts. These patients at once pretended to be able to read the future and prophesy. (See Calmeil, work cited.)

Abusive religious practices, false ideas of the future life, a tendency to mysticism, the fear of Hell and the snares of the Devil, the development of hysterical neurosis, in one subject, into suggestion inherent to imitation; such was the succinct history of the epidemic of the nuns of Cambrai. Jeanne Pothiere, their companion, denounced by them, was condemned to perpetual imprisonment, for having cohabited “434 times” (so the nuns said) with a Demon, and having introduced the lustful devil into their before peaceful convent. For it could have been nothing less than a demon that chased the poor young nuns across the fields and assisted them to climb trees, where, suspended from the branches, they were inspired to divine hidden things, to foretell the future, and be the victims of convulsions.

Sixty years later, in 1550, there suddenly occurred a great number of hystero-demonomaniacal epidemics similar to that in the convent of Cambrai. The nuns of Uvertet, following a strict fast, were attacked by divers nervous disorders. During the night they heard groans, when they burst out in peals of hysterical laughter; following this manifestation, they claimed they were lifted out of their beds by a superior force; they had, at the same time, contractions in the muscles of the limbs and of the face. They attacked each other in wild frenzy, giving and taking furious blows; at other times they were found on the ground, as though “inanimate,” and to this species of lethargy succeeded a maniacal agitation of great violence. Like the nuns of Cambrai, they climbed trees and ran over the branches as agile as so many cats, descending head downwards with feet in the air. These manifestations were, of course, attributed to a compact with the Devil, and the officers of the law, acting on the accusations of these nuns, arrested a midwife residing in the neighborhood, on the charge of witchcraft (sorcery). It is needless to add that the midwife died soon after.

A neurosis almost similar occurred the same year among the nuns at Saint Brigette’s Convent. In their attacks these nuns imitated the cries of animals and the bleating of sheep. At chapel one after the other were taken with convulsive syncope, followed by suffocation and œsophageal spasms, which sometimes persisted for the space of several days and condemned the victims to an enforced fast. This epidemic commenced after an hysterical convulsion occurred in one of the younger nuns, who had entered the convent on account of disappointment in love. Convinced that this unfortunate creature had imported a devil into the religious community, she was banished to one of the prisons of the Church.

At about this same time another epidemic of hystero-demonomania broke out at the Convent of Kintorp, near Strasbourg. These nuns insisted that they were possessed. Convulsions and muscular contractions which followed these attacks, along with delirium, were attributed to epilepsy. Progressively, and as though by contagion, all the nuns were stricken. When the hysterical attack arrived they uttered howls, like animals, then assaulted each other violently, biting with their teeth and scratching with finger-nails. Among those having convulsions the muscles of the pharynx participated in the general spasmodic condition. The attack was announced by a fetid breath and a sensation of burning at the soles of the feet. One day some of the young sisters denounced the convent cook, Elise Kame, as a sorcerer, although she suffered like the others from convulsive hysteria. This accusation finished the poor girl, who, together with her mother, was committed alive to the flames. Their death, most naturally, did not relieve the convent of the disease; the nervous malady, on the contrary, spread around in the neighborhood of the institution, attacking married women and young girls, whose imaginations were overpowered by the recital of occurrences within the convent walls.