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Title: Curious Myths of the Middle Ages
Author: Sabine Baring-Gould
* A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook *
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Language: English
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Curious Myths of the Middle Ages
by
Sabine Baring-Gould
First published by Rivingtons, London, 1866
First US edition: Robert Brothers, Boston, 1867
TABLE OF CONTENTS
(I)The Wandering Jew
(II)Prester John
(III)The Divining Rod
(IV)The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus
(V)William Tell
(VI)The Dog Gellert
(VII)Tailed Men
(VIII)Antichrist and Pope Joan
(IX)The Man in the Moon
(X)The Mountain of Venus
(XI)Fatality of Numbers
(XII)The Terrestrial Paradise
Pope Joan. From Joh. Wolfii Lect. Memorab. (Lavingæ,
1600.)
I. — THE WANDERING JEW
WHO, that has looked on Gustave Doré's marvellous
illustrations to this wild legend, can forget the impression they made upon
his imagination?
I do not refer to the first illustration as striking, where the Jewish
shoemaker is refusing to suffer the cross-laden Savior to rest a moment on
his door-step, and is receiving with scornful lip the judgment to wander
restless till the Second Coming of that same Redeemer. But I refer rather to
the second, which represents the Jew, after the lapse of ages, bowed beneath
the burden of the curse, worn with unrelieved toil, wearied with ceaseless
travelling, trudging onward at the last lights of evening, when a rayless
night of unabating rain is creeping on, along a sloppy path between dripping
bushes; and suddenly he comes over against a wayside crucifix, on which the
white glare of departing daylight falls, to throw it into ghastly relief
against the pitch-black rain-clouds. For a moment we see the working of the
miserable shoemaker's mind. We feel that he is recalling the tragedy of the
first Good Friday, and his head hangs heavier on his breast, as he recalls
the part he had taken in that awful catastrophe.
Or, is that other illustration more remarkable, where the wanderer is
amongst the Alps, at the brink of a hideous chasm; and seeing in the
contorted pine-branches the ever-haunting scene of the Via Dolorosa, he is
lured to cast himself into that black gulf in quest of rest,—when an
angel flashes out of the gloom with the sword of flame turning every way,
keeping him back from what would be to him a Paradise indeed, the repose of
Death?
Or, that last scene, when the trumpet sounds and earth is shivering to its
foundations, the fire is bubbling forth through the rents in its surface, and
the dead are coming together flesh to flesh, and bone to bone, and muscle to
muscle—then the weary man sits down and casts off his shoes! Strange
sights are around him, he sees them not; strange sounds assail his ears, he
hears but one—the trumpet-note which gives the signal for him to stay
his wanderings and rest his weary feet.
I can linger over those noble woodcuts, and learn from them something new
each time that I study them; they are picture-poems full of latent depths of
thought. And now let us to the history of this most thrilling of all mediæval
myths, if a myth.
If a myth, I say, for who can say for certain that it is not true? "Verily
I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death
till they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom,"[1] are our Lord's words,
which I can hardly think apply to the destruction of Jerusalem, as
commentators explain it to escape the difficulty. That some should live to
see Jerusalem destroyed was not very surprising, and hardly needed the
emphatic Verily which Christ only used when speaking something of peculiarly
solemn or mysterious import.
[1] Matt. xvi. 28. Mark ix. 1.
Besides, St. Luke's account manifestly refers the coming in the kingdom to
the Judgment, for the saying stands as follows: "Whosoever shall be ashamed
of Me, and of My words, of him shall the Son of Man be ashamed, when He shall
come in His own glory, and in His Father's, and of the holy angels. But I
tell you of a truth, there be some standing here, which shall not taste of
death till they see the kingdom of God."[2]
[2] Luke ix.
There can, I think, be no doubt in the mind of an unprejudiced person that
the words of our Lord do imply that some one or more of those then living
should not die till He came again. I do not mean to insist on the literal
signification, but I plead that there is no improbability in our Lord's words
being fulfilled to the letter. That the circumstance is unrecorded in the
Gospels is no evidence that it did not take place, for we are expressly told,
"Many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of His disciples, which are
not written in this book;"[3] and again, "There are also many other things
which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose
that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be
written."[4]
[3] John xx. 30.
[4] John xxi. 25.
We may remember also the mysterious witnesses who are to appear in the
last eventful days of the world's history and bear testimony to the Gospel
truth before the antichristian world. One of these has been often conjectured
to be St. John the Evangelist, of whom Christ said to Peter, "If I will that
he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?"
The historical evidence on which the tale rests is, however, too slender
for us to admit for it more than the barest claim to be more than myth. The
names and the circumstances connected with the Jew and his doom vary in every
account, and the only point upon which all coincide is, that such an
individual exists in an undying condition, wandering over the face of the
earth, seeking rest and finding none.
The earliest extant mention of the Wandering Jew is to be found in the
book of the chronicles of the Abbey of St. Albans, which was copied and
continued by Matthew Paris. He records that in the year 1228,
"A certain Archbishop of Armenia the Greater came on a
pilgrimage to England to see the relics of the saints, and visit the sacred
places in the kingdom, as he had done in others; he also produced letters of
recommendation from his Holiness the Pope, to the religious and the prelates
of the churches, in which they were enjoined to receive and entertain him
with due reverence and honor. On his arrival, he came to St. Albans, where he
was received with all respect by the abbot and the monks; and at this place,
being fatigued with his journey, he remained some days to rest himself and
his followers, and a conversation took place between him and the inhabitants
of the convent, by means of their interpreters, during which he made many
inquiries relating to the religion and religious observances of this country,
and told many strange things concerning the countries of the East. In the
course of conversation he was asked whether he had ever seen or heard any
thing of Joseph, a man of whom there was much talk in the world, who, when
our Lord suffered, was present and spoke to Him, and who is still alive, in
evidence of the Christian faith; in reply to which, a knight in his retinue,
who was his interpreter, replied, speaking in French, 'My lord well knows
that man, and a little before he took his way to the western countries, the
said Joseph ate at the table of my lord the Archbishop of Armenia, and he has
often seen and conversed with him.'
"He was then asked about what had passed between Christ and
the said Joseph; to which he replied, 'At the time of the passion of Jesus
Christ, He was seized by the Jews, and led into the hall of judgment before
Pilate, the governor, that He might be judged by him on the accusation of the
Jews; and Pilate, finding no fault for which he might sentence Him to death,
said unto them, "Take Him and judge Him according to your law;" the shouts of
the Jews, however, increasing, he, at their request, released unto them
Barabbas, and delivered Jesus to them to be crucified. When, therefore, the
Jews were dragging Jesus forth, and had reached the door, Cartaphilus, a
porter of the hall in Pilate's service, as Jesus was going out of the door,
impiously struck Him on the back with his hand, and said in mockery,﹃Go
quicker, Jesus, go quicker; why do you loiter?﹄and Jesus, looking back on
him with a severe countenance, said to him,﹃I am going, and you shall wait
till I return.﹄And according as our Lord said, this Cartaphilus is still
awaiting His return. At the time of our Lord's suffering he was thirty years
old, and when he attains the age of a hundred years, he always returns to the
same age as he was when our Lord suffered. After Christ's death, when the
Catholic faith gained ground, this Cartaphilus was baptized by Ananias (who
also baptized the Apostle Paul), and was called Joseph. He dwells in one or
other divisions of Armenia, and in divers Eastern countries, passing his time
amongst the bishops and other prelates of the Church; he is a man of holy
conversation, and religious; a man of few words, and very circumspect in his
behavior; for he does not speak at all unless when questioned by the bishops
and religious; and then he relates the events of olden times, and speaks of
things which occurred at the suffering and resurrection of our Lord, and of
the witnesses of the resurrection, namely, of those who rose with Christ, and
went into the holy city, and appeared unto men. He also tells of the creed of
the Apostles, and of their separation and preaching. And all this he relates
without smiling, or levity of conversation, as one who is well practised in
sorrow and the fear of God, always looking forward with dread to the coming
of Jesus Christ, lest at the Last Judgment he should find him in anger whom,
when on his way to death, he had provoked to just vengeance. Numbers came to
him from different parts of the world, enjoying his society and conversation;
and to them, if they are men of authority, he explains all doubts on the
matters on which he is questioned. He refuses all gifts that are offered him,
being content with slight food and clothing.'"
Much about the same date, Philip Mouskes, afterwards Bishop of Tournay,
wrote his rhymed chronicle (1242), which contains a similar account of the
Jew, derived from the same Armenian prelate:—
"Adonques vint un arceveskes
De çà mer, plains de bonnes tèques
Par samblant, et fut d'Armenie,"
and this man, having visited the shrine of﹃St. Tumas de
Kantorbire,﹄and then having paid his devotions at "Monsigour St. Jake," he
went on to Cologne to see the heads of the three kings. The version told in
the Netherlands much resembled that related at St. Albans, only that the Jew,
seeing the people dragging Christ to his death, exclaims,—
"Atendés moi! g'i vois,
S'iert mis le faus profète en crois."
Then
"Le vrais Dieux se regarda,
Et li a dit qu'e n'i tarda,
Icist ne t'atenderont pas,
Mais saces, tu m'atenderas."
We hear no more of the wandering Jew till the sixteenth century, when we
hear first of him in a casual manner, as assisting a weaver, Kokot, at the
royal palace in Bohemia (1505), to find a treasure which had been secreted by
the great-grandfather of Kokot, sixty years before, at which time the Jew was
present. He then had the appearance of being a man of seventy years.[5]
[5] Gubitz, Gesellsch. 1845, No. 18.
Curiously enough, we next hear of him in the East, where he is confounded
with the prophet Elijah. Early in the century he appeared to Fadhilah, under
peculiar circumstances.
After the Arabs had captured the city of Elvan, Fadhilah, at the head of
three hundred horsemen, pitched his tents, late in the evening, between two
mountains. Fadhilah, having begun his evening prayer with a loud voice, heard
the words "Allah akbar" (God is great) repeated distinctly, and each word of
his prayer was followed in a similar manner. Fadhilah, not believing this to
be the result of an echo, was much astonished, and cried out,﹃O thou!
whether thou art of the angel ranks, or whether thou art of some other order
of spirits, it is well; the power of God be with thee; but if thou art a man,
then let mine eyes light upon thee, that I may rejoice in thy presence and
society.﹄Scarcely had he spoken these words, before an aged man, with bald
head, stood before him, holding a staff in his hand, and much resembling a
dervish in appearance. After having courteously saluted him, Fadhilah asked
the old man who he was. Thereupon the stranger answered,﹃Bassi Hadhret Issa,
I am here by command of the Lord Jesus, who has left me in this world, that I
may live therein until he comes a second time to earth. I wait for this Lord,
who is the Fountain of Happiness, and in obedience to his command I dwell
behind yon mountain.﹄When Fadhilah heard these words, he asked when the Lord
Jesus would appear; and the old man replied that his appearing would be at
the end of the world, at the Last Judgment. But this only increased
Fadhilah's curiosity, so that he inquired the signs of the approach of the
end of all things, whereupon Zerib Bar Elia gave him an account of general,
social, and moral dissolution, which would be the climax of this world's
history.[6]
[6] Herbelot, Bibl. Orient, iii. p. 607.
In 1547 he was seen in Europe, if we are to believe the following
narration:—
"Paul von Eitzen, doctor of the Holy Scriptures, and Bishop
of Schleswig,[7] related as true for some years past, that when he was young,
having studied at Wittemberg, he returned home to his parents in Hamburg in
the winter of the year 1547, and that on the following Sunday, in church, he
observed a tall man, with his hair hanging over his shoulders, standing
barefoot, during the sermon, over against the pulpit, listening with deepest
attention to the discourse, and, whenever the name of Jesus was mentioned,
bowing himself profoundly and humbly, with sighs and beating of the breast.
He had no other clothing, in the bitter cold of the winter, except a pair of
hose which were in tatters about his feet, and a coat with a girdle which
reached to his feet; and his general appearance was that of a man of fifty
years. And many people, some of high degree and title, have seen this same
man in England, France, Italy, Hungary, Persia, Spain, Poland, Moscow,
Lapland, Sweden, Denmark, Scotland, and other places.
[7] Paul v. Eitzen was born January 25, 1522, at Hamburg;
in 1562 he was appointed chief preacher for Schleswig, and died February 25,
1598. (Greve, Memor. P. ab. Eitzen. Hamb. 1844.)
"Every one wondered over the man. Now, after the sermon, the
said Doctor inquired diligently where the stranger was to be found; and when
he had sought him out, he inquired of him privately whence he came, and how
long that winter he had been in the place. Thereupon he replied, modestly,
that he was a Jew by birth, a native of Jerusalem, by name Ahasverus, by
trade a shoemaker; he had been present at the crucifixion of Christ, and had
lived ever since, travelling through various lands and cities, the which he
substantiated by accounts he gave; he related also the circumstances of
Christ's transference from Pilate to Herod, and the final crucifixion,
together with other details not recorded in the Evangelists and historians;
he gave accounts of the changes of government in many countries, especially
of the East, through several centuries; and moreover he detailed the labors
and deaths of the holy Apostles of Christ most circumstantially.
"Now when Doctor Paul v. Eitzen heard this with profound
astonishment, on account of its incredible novelty, he inquired further, in
order that he might obtain more accurate information. Then the man answered,
that he had lived in Jerusalem at the time of the crucifixion of Christ, whom
he had regarded as a deceiver of the people, and a heretic; he had seen Him
with his own eyes, and had done his best, along with others, to bring this
deceiver, as he regarded Him, to justice, and to have Him put out of the way.
When the sentence had been pronounced by Pilate, Christ was about to be
dragged past his house; then he ran home, and called together his household
to have a look at Christ, and see what sort of a person He was.
"This having been done, he had his little child on his arm,
and was standing in his doorway, to have a sight of the Lord Jesus
Christ.
"As, then, Christ was led by, bowed under the weight of the
heavy cross, He tried to rest a little, and stood still a moment; but the
shoemaker, in zeal and rage, and for the sake of obtaining credit among the
other Jews, drove the Lord Christ forward, and told Him to hasten on His way.
Jesus, obeying, looked at him, and said, 'I shall stand and rest, but thou
shalt go till the last day.' At these words the man set down the child; and,
unable to remain where he was, he followed Christ, and saw how cruelly He was
crucified, how He suffered, how He died. As soon as this had taken place, it
came upon him suddenly that he could no more return to Jerusalem, nor see
again his wife and child, but must go forth into foreign lands, one after
another, like a mournful pilgrim. Now, when, years after, he returned to
Jerusalem, he found it ruined and utterly razed, so that not one stone was
left standing on another; and he could not recognize former localities.
"He believes that it is God's purpose, in thus driving him
about in miserable life, and preserving him undying, to present him before
the Jews at the end, as a living token, so that the godless and unbelieving
may remember the death of Christ, and be turned to repentance. For his part
he would well rejoice were God in heaven to release him from this vale of
tears. After this conversation, Doctor Paul v. Eitzen, along with the rector
of the school of Hamburg, who was well read in history, and a traveller,
questioned him about events which had taken place in the East since the death
of Christ, and he was able to give them much information on many ancient
matters; so that it was impossible not to be convinced of the truth of his
story, and to see that what seems impossible with men is, after all, possible
with God.
"Since the Jew has had his life extended, he has become
silent and reserved, and only answers direct questions. When invited to
become any one's guest, he eats little, and drinks in great moderation; then
hurries on, never remaining long in one place. When at Hamburg, Dantzig, and
elsewhere, money has been offered him, he never took more than two skillings
(fourpence, one farthing), and at once distributed it to the poor, as token
that he needed no money, for God would provide for him, as he rued the sins
he had committed in ignorance.
"During the period of his stay in Hamburg and Dantzig he was
never seen to laugh. In whatever land he travelled he spoke its language, and
when he spoke Saxon, it was like a native Saxon. Many people came from
different places to Hamburg and Dantzig in order to see and hear this man,
and were convinced that the providence of God was exercised in this
individual in a very remarkable manner. He gladly listened to God's word, or
heard it spoken of always with great gravity and compunction, and he ever
reverenced with sighs the pronunciation of the name of God, or of Jesus
Christ, and could not endure to hear curses; but whenever he heard any one
swear by God's death or pains, he waxed indignant, and exclaimed, with
vehemence and with sighs, 'Wretched man and miserable creature, thus to
misuse the name of thy Lord and God, and His bitter sufferings and passion.
Hadst thou seen, as I have, how heavy and bitter were the pangs and wounds of
thy Lord, endured for thee and for me, thou wouldst rather undergo great pain
thyself than thus take His sacred name in vain!'
"Such is the account given to me by Doctor Paul von Eitzen,
with many circumstantial proofs, and corroborated by certain of my own old
acquaintances who saw this same individual with their own eyes in
Hamburg.
"In the year 1575 the Secretary Christopher Krause, and
Master Jacob von Holstein, legates to the Court of Spain, and afterwards sent
into the Netherlands to pay the soldiers serving his Majesty in that country,
related on their return home to Schleswig, and confirmed with solemn oaths,
that they had come across the same mysterious individual at Madrid in Spain,
in appearance, manner of life, habits, clothing, just the same as he had
appeared in Hamburg. They said that they had spoken with him, and that many
people of all classes had conversed with him, and found him to speak good
Spanish. In the year 1599, in December, a reliable person wrote from
Brunswick to Strasburg that the same mentioned strange person had been seen
alive at Vienna in Austria, and that he had started for Poland and Dantzig;
and that he purposed going on to Moscow. This Ahasverus was at Lubeck in
1601, also about the same date in Revel in Livonia, and in Cracow in Poland.
In Moscow he was seen of many and spoken to by many.
"What thoughtful, God-fearing persons are to think of the
said person, is at their option. God's works are wondrous and past finding
out, and are manifested day by day, only to be revealed in full at the last
great day of account.
"Dated, Revel, August 1st, 1613.
"D. W.
"D.
"Chrysostomus Dudulœus,
"Westphalus."
The statement that the Wandering Jew appeared in Lubeck in 1601, does not
tally with the more precise chronicle of Henricus Bangert, which gives: "Die
14 Januarii Anno MDCIII., adnotatum reliquit Lubecæ fuisse Judæum illum
immortalem, qui se Christi crucifixioni interfuisse affirmavit."[8]
[8] Henr. Bangert, Comment. de Ortu, Vita, et Excessu
Coleri, I. Cti. Lubec.
In 1604 he seems to have appeared in Paris. Rudolph Botoreus says, under
this date, "I fear lest I be accused of giving ear to old wives' fables, if I
insert in these pages what is reported all over Europe of the Jew, coeval
with the Savior Christ; however, nothing is more common, and our popular
histories have not scrupled to assert it. Following the lead of those who
wrote our annals, I may say that he who appeared not in one century only, in
Spain, Italy, and Germany, was also in this year seen and recognized as the
same individual who had appeared in Hamburg, anno MDLXVI. The common people,
bold in spreading reports, relate many things of him; and this I allude to,
lest anything should be left unsaid."[9]
[9] R. Botoreus, Comm. Histor. lii. p. 305.
J. C. Bulenger puts the date of the Hamburg visit earlier. "It was
reported at this time that a Jew of the time of Christ was wandering without
food and drink, having for a thousand and odd years been a vagabond and
outcast, condemned by God to rove, because he, of that generation of vipers,
was the first to cry out for the crucifixion of Christ and the release of
Barabbas; and also because soon after, when Christ, panting under the burden
of the rood, sought to rest before his workshop (he was a cobbler), the
fellow ordered Him off with acerbity. Thereupon Christ replied, 'Because thou
grudgest Me such a moment of rest, I shall enter into My rest, but thou shalt
wander restless.' At once, frantic and agitated, he fled through the whole
earth, and on the same account to this day he journeys through the world. It
was this person who was seen in Hamburg in MDLXIV. Credat Judæus Apella!
Idid not see him, or hear anything authentic concerning him, at that
time when I was in Paris."[10]
[10] J. C. Bulenger, Historia sui Temporis, p. 357.
A curious little book,[11] written against the quackery of Paracelsus, by
Leonard Doldius, a Nürnberg physician, and translated into Latin and
augmented, by Andreas Libavius, doctor and physician of Rotenburg, alludes to
the same story, and gives the Jew a new name nowhere else met with. After
having referred to a report that Paracelsus was not dead, but was seated
alive, asleep or napping, in his sepulchre at Strasburg, preserved from death
by some of his specifics, Libavius declares that he would sooner believe in
the old man, the Jew, Ahasverus, wandering over the world, called by some
Buttadæus, and otherwise, again, by others.
[11] Praxis Alchymiæ. Francfurti, MDCIV. 8vo.
He is said to have appeared in Naumburg, but the date is not given; he was
noticed in church, listening to the sermon. After the service he was
questioned, and he related his story. On this occasion he received presents
from the burgers.[12] In 1633 he was again in Hamburg.[13] In the year 1640,
two citizens, living in the Gerberstrasse, in Brussels, were walking in the
Sonian wood, when they encountered an aged man, whose clothes were in tatters
and of an antiquated appearance. They invited him to go with them to a house
of refreshment, and he went with them, but would not seat himself, remaining
on foot to drink. When he came before the doors with the two burgers, he told
them a great deal; but they were mostly stories of events which had happened
many hundred years before. Hence the burgers gathered that their companion
was Isaac Laquedem, the Jew who had refused to permit our Blessed Lord to
rest for a moment at his door-step, and they left him full of terror. In 1642
he is reported to have visited Leipzig. On the 22d July, 1721, he appeared at
the gates of the city of Munich.[14] About the end of the seventeenth century
or the beginning of the eighteenth, an impostor, calling himself the
Wandering Jew, attracted attention in England, and was listened to by the
ignorant, and despised by the educated. He, however, managed to thrust
himself into the notice of the nobility, who, half in jest, half in
curiosity, questioned him, and paid him as they might a juggler. He declared
that he had been an officer of the Sanhedrim, and that he had struck Christ
as he left the judgment hall of Pilate. He remembered all the Apostles, and
described their personal appearance, their clothes, and their peculiarities.
He spoke many languages, claimed the power of healing the sick, and asserted
that he had travelled nearly all over the world. Those who heard him were
perplexed by his familiarity with foreign tongues and places. Oxford and
Cambridge sent professors to question him, and to discover the imposition, if
any. An English nobleman conversed with him in Arabic. The mysterious
stranger told his questioner in that language that historical works were not
to be relied upon. And on being asked his opinion of Mahomet, he replied that
he had been acquainted with the father of the prophet, and that he dwelt at
Ormuz. As for Mahomet, he believed him to have been a man of intelligence;
once when he heard the prophet deny that Christ was crucified, he answered
abruptly by telling him he was a witness to the truth of that event. He
related also that he was in Rome when Nero set it on fire; he had known
Saladin, Tamerlane, Bajazeth, Eterlane, and could give minute details of the
history of the Crusades.[15]
[12] Mitternacht, Diss. in Johann. xxi. 19.
[13] Mitternacht, ut supra.
[14] Hormayr, Taschenbuch, 1834, p. 216.
[15] Calmet, Dictionn. de la Bible, t. ii. p. 472.
Whether this wandering Jew was found out in London or not, we cannot tell,
but he shortly after appeared in Denmark, thence travelled into Sweden, and
vanished.
Such are the principal notices of the Wandering Jew which have appeared.
It will be seen at once how wanting they are in all substantial evidence
which could make us regard the story in any other light than myth.
But no myth is wholly without foundation, and there must be some
substantial verity upon which this vast superstructure of legend has been
raised. What that is I am unable to discover.
It has been suggested by some that the Jew Ahasverus is an impersonation
of that race which wanders, Cain-like, over the earth with the brand of a
brother's blood upon it, and one which is not to pass away till all be
fulfilled, not to be reconciled to its angered God till the times of the
Gentiles are accomplished. And yet, probable as this supposition may seem at
first sight, it is not to be harmonized with some of the leading features of
the story. The shoemaker becomes a penitent, and earnest Christian, whilst
the Jewish nation has still the veil upon its heart; the wretched wanderer
eschews money, and the avarice of the Israelite is proverbial.
According to local legend, he is identified with the Gypsies, or rather
that strange people are supposed to be living under a curse somewhat similar
to that inflicted on Ahasverus, because they refused shelter to the Virgin
and Child on their flight into Egypt.[16] Another tradition connects the Jew
with the wild huntsman, and there is a forest at Bretten, in Swabia, which he
is said to haunt. Popular superstition attributes to him there a purse
containing a groschen, which, as often as it is expended, returns to the
spender.[17]
[16] Aventinus, Bayr. Chronik, viii.
[17] Meier, Schwäbische Sagen, i. 116.
In the Harz one form of the Wild Huntsman myth is to this effect: that he
was a Jew who had refused to suffer our Blessed Lord to drink out of a river,
or out of a horse-trough, but had contemptuously pointed out to Him the
hoof-print of a horse, in which a little water had collected, and had bid Him
quench His thirst thence.[18]
[18] Kuhn u. Schwarz Nordd. Sagen, p. 499.
As the Wild Huntsman is the personification of the storm, it is curious to
find in parts of France that the sudden roar of a gale at night is attributed
by the vulgar to the passing of the Everlasting Jew.
A Swiss story is, that he was seen one day standing upon the Matterberg,
which is below the Matterhorn, contemplating the scene with mingled sorrow
and wonder. Once before he stood on that spot, and then it was the site of a
flourishing city; now it is covered with gentian and wild pinks. Once again
will he revisit the hill, and that will be on the eve of Judgment.
Perhaps, of all the myths which originated in the middle ages, none is
more striking than that we have been considering; indeed, there is something
so calculated to arrest the attention and to excite the imagination in the
outline of the story, that it is remarkable that we should find an interval
of three centuries elapse between its first introduction into Europe by
Matthew Paris and Philip Mouskes, and its general acceptance in the sixteenth
century. As a myth, its roots lie in that great mystery of human life which
is an enigma never solved, and ever originating speculation.
What was life? Was it of necessity limited to fourscore years, or could it
be extended indefinitely? were questions curious minds never wearied of
asking. And so the mythology of the past teemed with legends of favored or
accursed mortals, who had reached beyond the term of days set to most men.
Some had discovered the water of life, the fountain of perpetual youth, and
were ever renewing their strength. Others had dared the power of God, and
were therefore sentenced to feel the weight of His displeasure, without
tasting the repose of death.
John the Divine slept at Ephesus, untouched by corruption, with the ground
heaving over his breast as he breathed, waiting the summons to come forth and
witness against Antichrist. The seven sleepers reposed in a cave, and
centuries glided by like a watch in the night. The monk of Hildesheim,
doubting how with God a thousand years could be as yesterday, listened to the
melody of a bird in the green wood during three minutes, and found that in
three minutes three hundred years had flown. Joseph of Arimathæa, in the
blessed city of Sarras, draws perpetual life from the Saint Graal; Merlin
sleeps and sighs in an old tree, spell-bound of Vivien. Charlemagne and
Barbarossa wait, crowned and armed, in the heart of the mountain, till the
time comes for the release of Fatherland from despotism. And, on the other
hand, the curse of a deathless life has passed on the Wild Huntsman, because
he desired to chase the red-deer for evermore; on the Captain of the Phantom
Ship, because he vowed he would double the Cape whether God willed it or not;
on the Man in the Moon, because he gathered sticks during the Sabbath rest;
on the dancers of Kolbeck, because they desired to spend eternity in their
mad gambols.
I began this article intending to conclude it with a bibliographical
account of the tracts, letters, essays, and books, written upon the Wandering
Jew; but I relinquish my intention at the sight of the multitude of works
which have issued from the press upon the subject; and this I do with less
compunction as the bibliographer may at little trouble and expense satisfy
himself, by perusing the lists given by Grässe in his essay on the myth, and
those to be found in﹃Notice historique et bibliographique sur les
Juifs-errants: par O. B.﹄(Gustave Brunet), Paris, Téchener, 1845; also in
the article by M. Mangin, in﹃Causeries et Méditations historiques et
littéraires,﹄Paris, Duprat, 1843; and, lastly, in the essay by Jacob le
Bibliophile (M. Lacroix) in his﹃Curiosités de l'Histoire des Croyances
populaires,﹄Paris, Delahays, 1859.
Of the romances of Eugène Sue and Dr. Croly, founded upon the legend, the
less said the better. The original legend is so noble in its severe
simplicity, that none but a master mind could develop it with any chance of
success. Nor have the poetical attempts upon the story fared better. It was
reserved for the pencil of Gustave Doré to treat it with the originality it
merited, and in a series of woodcuts to produce at once a poem, a romance,
and a chef-d'œuvre of art.
II. — PRESTER JOHN
Arms of the See of Chichester.
ABOUT the middle of the twelfth century, a rumor circulated
through Europe that there reigned in Asia a powerful Christian Emperor,
Presbyter Johannes. In a bloody fight he had broken the power of the
Mussulmans, and was ready to come to the assistance of the Crusaders. Great
was the exultation in Europe, for of late the news from the East had been
gloomy and depressing, the power of the infidel had increased, overwhelming
masses of men had been brought into the field against the chivalry of
Christendom, and it was felt that the cross must yield before the odious
crescent.
The news of the success of the Priest-King opened a door of hope to the
desponding Christian world. Pope Alexander III. determined at once to effect
a union with this mysterious personage, and on the 27th of September, 1177,
wrote him a letter, which he intrusted to his physician, Philip, to deliver
in person.
Philip started on his embassy, but never returned. The conquests of
Tschengis-Khan again attracted the eyes of Christian Europe to the East. The
Mongol hordes were rushing in upon the west with devastating ferocity;
Russia, Poland, Hungary, and the eastern provinces of Germany, had succumbed,
or suffered grievously; and the fears of other nations were roused lest they
too should taste the misery of a Mongolian invasion. It was Gog and Magog
come to slaughter, and the times of Antichrist were dawning. But the battle
of Liegnitz stayed them in their onward career, and Europe was saved.
Pope Innocent IV. determined to convert these wild hordes of barbarians,
and subject them to the cross of Christ; he therefore sent among them a
number of Dominican and Franciscan missioners, and embassies of peace passed
between the Pope, the King of France, and the Mogul Khan.
The result of these communications with the East was, that the travellers
learned how false were the prevalent notions of a mighty Christian empire
existing in Central Asia. Vulgar superstition or conviction is not, however,
to be upset by evidence, and the locality of the monarchy was merely
transferred by the people to Africa, and they fixed upon Abyssinia, with a
show of truth, as the seat of the famous Priest-King. However, still some
doubted. John de Plano Carpini and Marco Polo, though they acknowledged the
existence of a Christian monarch in Abyssinia, yet stoutly maintained as well
that the Prester John of popular belief reigned in splendor somewhere in the
dim Orient.
But before proceeding with the history of this strange fable, it will be
well to extract the different accounts given of the Priest-King and his realm
by early writers; and we shall then be better able to judge of the influence
the myth obtained in Europe.
Otto of Freisingen is the first author to mention the monarchy of Prester
John with whom we are acquainted. Otto wrote a chronicle up to the date 1156,
and he relates that in 1145 the Catholic Bishop of Cabala visited Europe to
lay certain complaints before the Pope. He mentioned the fall of Edessa, and
also:—
"...he stated that a few years ago a certain King and Priest
called John, who lives on the farther side of Persia and Armenia, in the
remote East, and who, with all his people, were Christians, though belonging
to the Nestorian Church, had overcome the royal brothers Samiardi, kings of
the Medes and Persians, and had captured Ecbatana, their capital and
residence. The said kings had met with their Persian, Median, and Assyrian
troops, and had fought for three consecutive days, each side having
determined to die rather than take to flight. Prester John, for so they are
wont to call him, at length routed the Persians, and after a bloody battle,
remained victorious. After which victory the said John was hastening to the
assistance of the Church at Jerusalem, but his host, on reaching the Tigris,
was hindered from passing, through a deficiency in boats, and he directed his
march North, since he had heard that the river was there covered with ice. In
that place he had waited many years, expecting severe cold; but the winters
having proved unpropitious, and the severity of the climate having carried
off many soldiers, he had been forced to retreat to his own land. This king
belongs to the family of the Magi, mentioned in the Gospel, and he rules over
the very people formerly governed by the Magi; moreover, his fame and his
wealth are so great, that he uses an emerald sceptre only.
"Excited by the example of his ancestors, who came to
worship Christ in his cradle, he had proposed to go to Jerusalem, but had
been impeded by the above-mentioned causes."[19]
[19] Otto, Ep. Frising., lib. vii. c. 33.
At the same time the story crops up in other quarters; so that we cannot
look upon Otto as the inventor of the myth. The celebrated Maimonides alludes
to it in a passage quoted by Joshua Lorki, a Jewish physician to Benedict
XIII. Maimonides lived from 1135 to 1204. The passage is as follows: "It is
evident both from the letters of Rambam (Maimonides), whose memory be
blessed, and from the narration of merchants who have visited the ends of the
earth, that at this time the root of our faith is to be found in the lands of
Babel and Teman, where long ago Jerusalem was an exile; not reckoning those
who live in the land of Paras[20] and Madai,[21] of the exiles of Schomrom,
the number of which people is as the sand: of these some are still under the
yoke of Paras, who is called the Great-Chief Sultan by the Arabs; others live
in a place under the yoke of a strange people ... governed by a Christian
chief, Preste-Cuan by name. With him they have made a compact, and he with
them; and this is a matter concerning which there can be no manner of
doubt."
[20] Persia.
[21] Media.
Benjamin of Tudela, another Jew, travelled in the East between the years
1159 and 1173, the last being the date of his death. He wrote an account of
his travels, and gives in it some information with regard to a mythical Jew
king, who reigned in the utmost splendor over a realm inhabited by Jews
alone, situate somewhere in the midst of a desert of vast extent. About this
period there appeared a document which produced intense excitement throughout
Europe—a letter, yes! a letter from the mysterious personage himself to
Manuel Comnenus, Emperor of Constantinople (1143-1180). The exact date of
this extraordinary epistle cannot be fixed with any certainty, but it
certainly appeared before 1241, the date of the conclusion of the chronicle
of Albericus Trium Fontium. This Albericus relates that in the year 1165
﹃Presbyter Joannes, the Indian king, sent his wonderful letter to various
Christian princes, and especially to Manuel of Constantinople, and Frederic
the Roman Emperor.﹄Similar letters were sent to Alexander III., to Louis
VII. of France, and to the King of Portugal, which are alluded to in
chronicles and romances, and which were indeed turned into rhyme, and sung
all over Europe by minstrels and trouvères. The letter is as
follows:—
"John, Priest by the Almighty power of God and the Might of
our Lord Jesus Christ, King of Kings, and Lord of Lords, to his friend
Emanuel, Prince of Constantinople, greeting, wishing him health, prosperity,
and the continuance of Divine favor.
"Our Majesty has been informed that you hold our Excellency
in love, and that the report of our greatness has reached you. Moreover, we
have heard through our treasurer that you have been pleased to send to us
some objects of art and interest, that our Exaltedness might be gratified
thereby.
"Being human, I receive it in good part, and we have ordered
our treasurer to send you some of our articles in return.
"Now we desire to be made certain that you hold the right
faith, and in all things cleave to Jesus Christ, our Lord, for we have heard
that your court regard you as a god, though we know that you are mortal, and
subject to human infirmities.... Should you desire to learn the greatness and
excellency of our Exaltedness and of the land subject to our sceptre, then
hear and believe:—I, Presbyter Johannes, the Lord of Lords, surpass all
under heaven in virtue, in riches, and in power; seventy-two kings pay us
tribute.... In the three Indies our Magnificence rules, and our land extends
beyond India, where rests the body of the holy Apostle Thomas; it reaches
towards the sunrise over the wastes, and it trends towards deserted Babylon
near the tower of Babel. Seventy-two provinces, of which only a few are
Christian, serve us. Each has its own king, but all are tributary to us.
"Our land is the home of elephants, dromedaries, camels,
crocodiles, meta-collinarum, cametennus, tensevetes, wild asses, white and
red lions, white bears, white merules, crickets, griffins, tigers, lamias,
hyenas, wild horses, wild oxen and wild men, men with horns, one-eyed, men
with eyes before and behind, centaurs, fauns, satyrs, pygmies, forty-ell-high
giants, Cyclopses, and similar women; it is the home, too, of the
phœnix, and of nearly all living animals. We have some people subject
to us who feed on the flesh of men and of prematurely born animals, and who
never fear death. When any of these people die, their friends and relations
eat him ravenously, for they regard it as a main duty to munch human flesh.
Their names are Gog and Magog, Anie, Agit, Azenach, Fommeperi, Befari,
Conei-Samante, Agrimandri, Vintefolei, Casbei, Alanei. These and similar
nations were shut in behind lofty mountains by Alexander the Great, towards
the North. We lead them at our pleasure against our foes, and neither man nor
beast is left undevoured, if our Majesty gives the requisite permission. And
when all our foes are eaten, then we return with our hosts home again. These
accursed fifteen nations will burst forth from the four quarters of the earth
at the end of the world, in the times of Antichrist, and overrun all the
abodes of the Saints as well as the great city Rome, which, by the way, we
are prepared to give to our son who will be born, along with all Italy,
Germany, the two Gauls, Britain and Scotland. We shall also give him Spain
and all the land as far as the icy sea. The nations to which I have alluded,
according to the words of the prophet, shall not stand in the judgment, on
account of their offensive practices, but will be consumed to ashes by a fire
which will fall on them from heaven.
"Our land streams with honey, and is overflowing with milk.
In one region grows no poisonous herb, nor does a querulous frog ever quack
in it; no scorpion exists, nor does the serpent glide amongst the grass, nor
can any poisonous animals exist in it, or injure any one.
"Among the heathen, flows through a certain province the
River Indus; encircling Paradise, it spreads its arms in manifold windings
through the entire province. Here are found the emeralds, sapphires,
carbuncles, topazes, chrysolites, onyxes, beryls, sardius, and other costly
stones. Here grows the plant Assidos, which, when worn by any one, protects
him from the evil spirit, forcing it to state its business and name;
consequently the foul spirits keep out of the way there. In a certain land
subject to us, all kinds of pepper is gathered, and is exchanged for corn and
bread, leather and cloth.... At the foot of Mount Olympus bubbles up a spring
which changes its flavor hour by hour, night and day, and the spring is
scarcely three days' journey from Paradise, out of which Adam was driven. If
any one has tasted thrice of the fountain, from that day he will feel no
fatigue, but will, as long as he lives, be as a man of thirty years. Here are
found the small stones called Nudiosi, which, if borne about the body,
prevent the sight from waxing feeble, and restore it where it is lost. The
more the stone is looked at, the keener becomes the sight. In our territory
is a certain waterless sea, consisting of tumbling billows of sand never at
rest. None have crossed this sea; it lacks water altogether, yet fish are
cast up upon the beach of various kinds, very tasty, and the like are nowhere
else to be seen. Three days' journey from this sea are mountains from which
rolls down a stony, waterless river, which opens into the sandy sea. As soon
as the stream reaches the sea, its stones vanish in it, and are never seen
again. As long as the river is in motion, it cannot be crossed; only four
days a week is it possible to traverse it. Between the sandy sea and the said
mountains, in a certain plain is a fountain of singular virtue, which purges
Christians and would-be Christians from all transgressions. The water stands
four inches high in a hollow stone shaped like a mussel-shell. Two saintly
old men watch by it, and ask the comers whether they are Christians, or are
about to become Christians, then whether they desire healing with all their
hearts. If they have answered well, they are bidden to lay aside their
clothes, and to step into the mussel. If what they said be true, then the
water begins to rise and gush over their heads; thrice does the water thus
lift itself, and every one who has entered the mussel leaves it cured of
every complaint.
"Near the wilderness trickles between barren mountains a
subterranean rill, which can only by chance be reached, for only occasionally
the earth gapes, and he who would descend must do it with precipitation, ere
the earth closes again. All that is gathered under the ground there is gem
and precious stone. The brook pours into another river, and the inhabitants
of the neighborhood obtain thence abundance of precious stones. Yet they
never venture to sell them without having first offered them to us for our
private use: should we decline them, they are at liberty to dispose of them
to strangers. Boys there are trained to remain three or four days under
water, diving after the stones.
"Beyond the stone river are the ten tribes of the Jews,
which, though subject to their own kings, are, for all that, our slaves and
tributary to our Majesty. In one of our lands, hight Zone, are worms called
in our tongue Salamanders. These worms can only live in fire, and they build
cocoons like silk-worms, which are unwound by the ladies of our palace, and
spun into cloth and dresses, which are worn by our Exaltedness. These
dresses, in order to be cleaned and washed, are cast into flames.... When we
go to war, we have fourteen golden and bejewelled crosses borne before us
instead of banners; each of these crosses is followed by 10,000 horsemen, and
100,000 foot soldiers fully armed, without reckoning those in charge of the
luggage and provision.
"When we ride abroad plainly, we have a wooden, unadorned
cross, without gold or gem about it, borne before us, in order that we may
meditate on the sufferings of Our Lord Jesus Christ; also a golden bowl
filled with earth, to remind us of that whence we sprung, and that to which
we must return; but besides these there is borne a silver bowl full of gold,
as a token to all that we are the Lord of Lords.
"All riches, such as are upon the world, our Magnificence
possesses in superabundance. With us no one lies, for he who speaks a lie is
thenceforth regarded as dead; he is no more thought of, or honored by us. No
vice is tolerated by us. Every year we undertake a pilgrimage, with retinue
of war, to the body of the holy prophet Daniel, which is near the desolated
site of Babylon. In our realm fishes are caught, the blood of which dyes
purple. The Amazons and the Brahmins are subject to us. The palace in which
our Supereminency resides, is built after the pattern of the castle built by
the Apostle Thomas for the Indian king Gundoforus. Ceilings, joists, and
architrave are of Sethym wood, the roof of ebony, which can never catch fire.
Over the gable of the palace are, at the extremities, two golden apples, in
each of which are two carbuncles, so that the gold may shine by day, and the
carbuncles by night. The greater gates of the palace are of sardius, with the
horn of the horned snake inwrought, so that no one can bring poison
within.
"The other portals are of ebony. The windows are of crystal;
the tables are partly of gold, partly of amethyst, and the columns supporting
the tables are partly of ivory, partly of amethyst. The court in which we
watch the jousting is floored with onyx in order to increase the courage of
the combatants. In the palace, at night, nothing is burned for light but
wicks supplied with balsam.... Before our palace stands a mirror, the ascent
to which consists of five and twenty steps of porphyry and serpentine."
After a description of the gems adorning this mirror, which is guarded
night and day by three thousand armed men, he explains its use: "We look
therein and behold all that is taking place in every province and region
subject to our sceptre.
"Seven kings wait upon us monthly, in turn, with sixty-two
dukes, two hundred and fifty-six counts and marquises: and twelve archbishops
sit at table with us on our right, and twenty bishops on the left, besides
the patriarch of St. Thomas, the Sarmatian Protopope, and the Archpope of
Susa.... Our lord high steward is a primate and king, our cup-bearer is an
archbishop and king, our chamberlain a bishop and king, our marshal a king
and abbot."
I may be spared further extracts from this extraordinary letter, which
proceeds to describe the church in which Prester John worships, by
enumerating the precious stones of which it is constructed, and their special
virtues.
Whether this letter was in circulation before Pope Alexander wrote his, it
is not easy to decide. Alexander does not allude to it, but speaks of the
reports which have reached him of the piety and the magnificence of the
Priest-King. At the same time, there runs a tone of bitterness through the
letter, as though the Pope had been galled at the pretensions of this
mysterious personage, and perhaps winced under the prospect of the man-eaters
overrunning Italy, as suggested by John the Priest. The papal epistle is an
assertion of the claims of the See of Rome to universal dominion, and it
assures the Eastern Prince-Pope that his Christian professions are worthless,
unless he submits to the successor of Peter.﹃Not every one that saith unto
me, Lord, Lord,﹄&c., quotes the Pope, and then explains that the will of
God is that every monarch and prelate should eat humble pie to the Sovereign
Pontiff.
Sir John Maundevil gives the origin of the priestly title of the Eastern
despot, in his curious book of travels.
"So it befelle, that this emperour cam, with a Cristene
knyght with him, into a chirche in Egypt: and it was Saterday in Wyttson
woke. And the bishop made orders. And he beheld and listened the servyse
fulle tentyfly: and he asked the Cristene knyght, what men of degree thei
scholden ben, that the prelate had before him. And the knyght answerede and
seyde, that thei scholde ben prestes. And then the emperour seyde, that he
wolde no longer ben clept kyng ne emperour, but preest: and that he wolde
have the name of the first preest, that wente out of the chirche; and his
name was John. And so evere more sittiens, he is clept Prestre John."
It is probable that the foundation of the whole Prester-John myth lay in
the report which reached Europe of the wonderful successes of Nestorianism in
the East, and there seems reason to believe that the famous letter given
above was a Nestorian fabrication. It certainly looks un-European; the
gorgeous imagery is thoroughly Eastern, and the disparaging tone in which
Rome is spoken of could hardly have been the expression of Western feelings.
The letter has the object in view of exalting the East in religion and arts
to an undue eminence at the expense of the West, and it manifests some
ignorance of European geography, when it speaks of the land extending from
Spain to the Polar Sea. Moreover, the sites of the patriarchates, and the
dignity conferred on that of St. Thomas, are indications of a Nestorian
bias.
A brief glance at the history of this heretical Church may be of value
here, as showing that there really was a foundation for the wild legends
concerning a Christian empire in the East, so prevalent in Europe. Nestorius,
a priest of Antioch and a disciple of St. Chrysostom, was elevated by the
emperor to the patriarchate of Constantinople, and in the year 428 began to
propagate his heresy, denying the hypostatic union. The Council of Ephesus
denounced him, and, in spite of the emperor and court, Nestorius was
anathematized and driven into exile. His sect spread through the East, and
became a flourishing church. It reached to China, where the emperor was all
but converted; its missionaries traversed the frozen tundras of Siberia,
preaching their maimed Gospel to the wild hordes which haunted those dreary
wastes; it faced Buddhism, and wrestled with it for the religious supremacy
in Thibet; it established churches in Persia and in Bokhara; it penetrated
India; it formed colonies in Ceylon, in Siam, and in Sumatra; so that the
Catholicos or Pope of Bagdad exercised sway more extensive than that ever
obtained by the successor of St. Peter. The number of Christians belonging to
that communion probably exceeded that of the members of the true Catholic
Church in East and West. But the Nestorian Church was not founded on the
Rock; it rested on Nestorius; and when the rain descended, and the winds
blew, and the floods came, and beat upon that house, it fell, leaving scarce
a fragment behind.
Rubruquis the Franciscan, who in 1253 was sent on a mission into Tartary,
was the first to let in a little light on the fable. He writes, "The Catai
dwelt beyond certain mountains across which I wandered, and in a plain in the
midst of the mountains lived once an important Nestorian shepherd, who ruled
over the Nestorian people, called Nayman. When Coir-Khan died, the Nestorian
people raised this man to be king, and called him King Johannes, and related
of him ten times as much as the truth. The Nestorians thereabouts have this
way with them, that about nothing they make a great fuss, and thus they have
got it noised abroad that Sartach, Mangu-Khan, and Ken-Khan were Christians,
simply because they treated Christians well, and showed them more honor than
other people. Yet, in fact, they were not Christians at all. And in like
manner the story got about that there was a great King John. However, I
traversed his pastures, and no one knew anything about him, except a few
Nestorians. In his pastures lives Ken-Khan, at whose court was Brother
Andrew, whom I met on my way back. This Johannes had a brother, a famous
shepherd, named Unc, who lived three weeks' journey beyond the mountains of
Caracatais."
This Unk-Khan was a real individual; he lost his life in the year 1203.
Kuschhik, prince of the Nayman, and follower of Kor-Khan, fell in 1218.
Marco Polo, the Venetian traveller (1254-1324), identifies Unk-Khan with
Prester John; he says,﹃I will now tell you of the deeds of the Tartars, how
they gained the mastery, and spread over the whole earth. The Tartars dwelt
between Georgia and Bargu, where there is a vast plain and level country, on
which are neither cities nor forts, but capital pasturage and water. They had
no chief of their own, but paid to Prester Johannes tribute. Of the greatness
of this Prester Johannes, who was properly called Un-Khan, the whole world
spake; the Tartars gave him one of every ten head of cattle. When Prester
John noticed that they were increasing, he feared them, and planned how he
could injure them. He determined therefore to scatter them, and he sent
barons to do this. But the Tartars guessed what Prester John purposed ... and
they went away into the wide wastes of the North, where they might be beyond
his reach.﹄He then goes on to relate how Tschengis-(Jenghiz-)Khan became the
head of the Tartars, and how he fought against Prester John, and, after a
desperate fight, overcame and slew him.
The Syriac Chronicle of the Jacobite Primate, Gregory Bar-Hebræus (born
1226, died 1286), also identifies Unk-Khan with Prester John.
"In the year of the Greeks 1514, of the Arabs 599 (A. D.
1202), when Unk-Khan, who is the Christian King John, ruled over a stock of
the barbarian Hunns, called Kergt, Tschingys-Khan served him with great zeal.
When John observed the superiority and serviceableness of the other, he
envied him, and plotted to seize and murder him. But two sons of Unk-Khan,
having heard this, told it to Tschingys; whereupon he and his comrades fled
by night, and secreted themselves. Next morning Unk-Khan took possession of
the Tartar tents, but found them empty. Then the party of Tschingys fell upon
him, and they met by the spring called Balschunah, and the side of Tschingys
won the day; and the followers of Unk-Khan were compelled to yield. They met
again several times, till Unk-Khan was utterly discomfited, and was slain
himself, and his wives, sons, and daughters carried into captivity. Yet we
must consider that King John the Kergtajer was not cast down for nought; nay,
rather, because he had turned his heart from the fear of Christ his Lord, who
had exalted him, and had taken a wife of the Zinish nation, called
Quarakhata. Because he forsook the religion of his ancestors and followed
strange gods, therefore God took the government from him, and gave it to one
better than he, and whose heart was right before God."
Some of the early travellers, such as John de Plano Carpini and Marco
Polo, in disabusing the popular mind of the belief in Prester John as a
mighty Asiatic Christian monarch, unintentionally turned the popular faith in
that individual into a new direction. They spoke of the black people of
Abascia in Ethiopia, which, by the way, they called Middle India, as a great
people subject to a Christian monarch.
Marco Polo says that the true monarch of Abyssinia is Christ; but that it
is governed by six kings, three of whom are Christians and three Saracens,
and that they are in league with the Soudan of Aden.
Bishop Jordanus, in his description of the world, accordingly sets down
Abyssinia as the kingdom of Prester John; and such was the popular
impression, which was confirmed by the appearance at intervals of ambassadors
at European courts from the King of Abyssinia. The discovery of the Cape of
Good Hope was due partly to a desire manifested in Portugal to open
communications with this monarch,[22] and King John II. sent two men learned
in Oriental languages through Egypt to the court of Abyssinia. The might and
dominion of this prince, who had replaced the Tartar chief in the popular
creed as Prester John, was of course greatly exaggerated, and was supposed to
extend across Arabia and Asia to the wall of China. The spread of
geographical knowledge has contracted the area of his dominions, and a
critical acquaintance with history has exploded the myth which invested
Unk-Khan, the nomad chief, with all the attributes of a demigod, uniting in
one the utmost pretensions of a Pope and the proudest claims of a
monarch.
[22] Ludolfi Hist. Æthiopica, lib. ii. cap. 1, 2. Petrus,
Petri filius Lusitaniæ princeps, M. Pauli Veneti librum (qui de Indorum rebus
multa: speciatim vero de Presbytero Johanne aliqua magnifice scripsit)
Venetiis secum in patriam detulerat, qui (Chronologicis Lusitanorum
testantibus) præcipuam Johanni Regi ansam dedit Indicæ navigationis, quam
Henricus Johannis I. filius, patruus ejus, tentaverat, prosequendæ,
&c.
III. — THE DIVINING ROD
FROM the remotest period a rod has been regarded as the
symbol of power and authority, and Holy Scripture employs it in the popular
sense. Thus David speaks of "Thy rod and Thy staff comforting me;" and Moses
works his miracles before Pharaoh with the rod as emblem of Divine
commission. It was his rod which became a serpent, which turned the water of
Egypt into blood, which opened the waves of the Red Sea and restored them to
their former level, which﹃smote the rock of stone so that the water gushed
out abundantly.﹄The rod of Aaron acted an oracular part in the contest with
the princes; laid up before the ark, it budded and brought forth almonds. In
this instance we have it no longer as a symbol of authority, but as a means
of divining the will of God. And as such it became liable to abuse; thus
Hosea rebukes the chosen people for practising similar divinations. "My
people ask counsel at their stocks, and their staff declareth unto
them."[23]
[23] Hos. iv. 12.
Long before this, Jacob had made a different use of rods, employing them
as a charm to make his father-in-law's sheep bear pied and spotted lambs.
We find rhabdomancy a popular form of divination among the Greeks, and
also among the Romans. Cicero in his "De Officiis" alludes to it. "If all
that is needful for our nourishment and support arrives to us by means of
some divine rod, as people say, then each of us, free from all care and
trouble, may give himself up to the exclusive pursuit of study and
science."
Probably it is to this rod that the allusion of Ennius, as the agent in
discovering hidden treasures, quoted in the first book of his﹃De
Divinatione,﹄refers.
According to Vetranius Maurus, Varro left a satire on the﹃Virgula
divina,﹄which has not been preserved. Tacitus tells us that the Germans
practised some sort of divination by means of rods.﹃For the purpose their
method is simple. They cut a rod off some fruit-tree into bits, and after
having distinguished them by various marks, they cast them into a white
cloth.... Then the priest thrice draws each piece, and explains the oracle
according to the marks.﹄Ammianus Marcellinus says that the Alains employed
an osier rod.
The fourteenth law of the Frisons ordered that the discovery of murders
should be made by means of divining rods used in Church. These rods should be
laid before the altar, and on the sacred relics, after which God was to be
supplicated to indicate the culprit. This was called the Lot of Rods, or
Tan-teen, the Rod of Rods.
But the middle ages was the date of the full development of the
superstition, and the divining rod was believed to have efficacy in
discovering hidden treasures, veins of precious metal, springs of water,
thefts, and murders. The first notice of its general use among late writers
is in the "Testamentum Novum," lib. i. cap. 25, of Basil Valentine, a
Benedictine monk of the fifteenth century. Basil speaks of the general faith
in and adoption of this valuable instrument for the discovery of metals,
which is carried by workmen in mines, either in their belts or in their caps.
He says that there are seven names by which this rod is known, and to its
excellences under each title he devotes a chapter of his book. The names are:
Divine Rod, Shining Rod, Leaping Rod, Transcendent Rod, Trembling Rod,
Dipping Rod, Superior Rod. In his admirable treatise on metals, Agricola
speaks of the rod in terms of disparagement; he considers its use as a relic
of ancient magical forms, and he says that it is only irreligious workmen who
employ it in their search after metals. Goclenius, however, in his treatise
on the virtue of plants, stoutly does battle for the properties of the hazel
rod. Whereupon Roberti, a Flemish Jesuit, falls upon him tooth and nail,
disputes his facts, overwhelms him with abuse, and gibbets him for popular
ridicule. Andreas Libavius, a writer I have already quoted in my article on
the Wandering Jew, undertook a series of experiments upon the hazel divining
rod, and concluded that there was truth in the popular belief. The Jesuit
Kircher also﹃experimentalized several times on wooden rods which were
declared to be sympathetic with regard to certain metals, by placing them on
delicate pivots in equilibrium; but they never turned on the approach of
metal.﹄(De Arte Magnetica.) However, a similar course of experiments over
water led him to attribute to the rod the power of indicating subterranean
springs and water-courses; "I would not affirm it," he says, "unless I had
established the fact by my own experience."
Dechales, another Jesuit, author of a treatise on natural springs, and of
a huge tome entitled "Mundus Mathematicus," declared in the latter work, that
no means of discovering sources is equal to the divining rod; and he quotes a
friend of his who, with a hazel rod in his hand, could discover springs with
the utmost precision and facility, and could trace on the surface of the
ground the course of a subterranean conduit. Another writer, Saint-Romain, in
his﹃Science dégagée des Chimères de l'École,﹄exclaims, "Is it not
astonishing to see a rod, which is held firmly in the hands, bow itself and
turn visibly in the direction of water or metal, with more or less
promptitude, according as the metal or the water are near or remote from the
surface!"
In 1659 the Jesuit Gaspard Schott writes that the rod is used in every
town of Germany, and that he had frequent opportunity of seeing it used in
the discovery of hidden treasures. "I searched with the greatest care," he
adds, "into the question whether the hazel rod had any sympathy with gold and
silver, and whether any natural property set it in motion. In like manner I
tried whether a ring of metal, held suspended by a thread in the midst of a
tumbler, and which strikes the hours, is moved by any similar force. I
ascertained that these effects could only have rise from the deception of
those holding the rod or the pendulum, or, may be, from some diabolic
impulsion, or, more likely still, because imagination sets the hand in
motion."
The Sieur le Royer, a lawyer of Rouen, in 1674, published his﹃Traité du
Bâton universel,﹄in which he gives an account of a trial made with the rod
in the presence of Father Jean François, who had ridiculed the operation in
his treatise on the science of waters, published at Rennes in 1655, and which
succeeded in convincing the blasphemer of the divine Rod. Le Royer denies to
it the power of picking out criminals, which had been popularly attributed to
it, and as had been unhesitatingly claimed for it by Debrio in his
"Disquisitio Magica."
And now I am brought to the extraordinary story of Jacques Aymar, which
attracted the attention of Europe to the marvellous properties of the
divining rod. I shall give the history of this man in full, as such an
account is rendered necessary by the mutilated versions I have seen current
in English magazine articles, which follow the lead of Mrs. Crowe, who
narrates the earlier portion of this impostor's career, but says nothing of
his exposé and downfall.
On the 5th July, 1692, at about ten o'clock in the evening, a wine-seller
of Lyons and his wife were assassinated in their cellar, and their money
carried off. On the morrow, the officers of justice arrived, and examined the
premises. Beside the corpses, lay a large bottle wrapped in straw, and a
bloody hedging bill, which undoubtedly had been the instrument used to
accomplish the murder. Not a trace of those who had committed the horrible
deed was to be found, and the magistrates were quite at fault as to the
direction in which they should turn for a clew to the murderer or
murderers.
At this juncture a neighbor reminded the magistrates of an incident which
had taken place four years previous. It was this. In 1688 a theft of clothes
had been made in Grenoble. In the parish of Crôle lived a man named Jacques
Aymar, supposed to be endowed with the faculty of using the divining rod.
This man was sent for. On reaching the spot where the theft had been
committed, his rod moved in his hand. He followed the track indicated by the
rod, and it continued to rotate between his fingers as long as he followed a
certain direction, but ceased to turn if he diverged from it in the smallest
degree. Guided by his rod, Aymar went from street to street, till he was
brought to a standstill before the prison gates. These could not be opened
without leave of the magistrate, who hastened to witness the experiment. The
gates were unlocked, and Aymar, under the same guidance, directed his steps
towards four prisoners lately incarcerated. He ordered the four to be stood
in a line, and then he placed his foot on that of the first. The rod remained
immovable. He passed to the second, and the rod turned at once. Before the
third prisoner there were no signs; the fourth trembled, and begged to be
heard. He owned himself the thief, along with the second, who also
acknowledged the theft, and mentioned the name of the receiver of the stolen
goods. This was a farmer in the neighborhood of Grenoble. The magistrate and
officers visited him and demanded the articles he had obtained. The farmer
denied all knowledge of the theft and all participation in the booty. Aymar,
however, by means of his rod, discovered the secreted property, and restored
it to the persons from whom it had been stolen.
On another occasion Aymar had been in quest of a spring of water, when he
felt his rod turn sharply in his hand. On digging at the spot, expecting to
discover an abundant source, the body of a murdered woman was found in a
barrel, with a rope twisted round her neck. The poor creature was recognized
as a woman of the neighborhood who had vanished four months before. Aymar
went to the house which the victim had inhabited, and presented his rod to
each member of the household. It turned upon the husband of the deceased, who
at once took to flight.
The magistrates of Lyons, at their wits' ends how to discover the
perpetrators of the double murder in the wine shop, urged the Procureur du
Roi to make experiment of the powers of Jacques Aymar. The fellow was sent
for, and he boldly asserted his capacity for detecting criminals, if he were
first brought to the spot of the murder, so as to be put en rapport
with the murderers.
He was at once conducted to the scene of the outrage, with the rod in his
hand. This remained stationary as he traversed the cellar, till he reached
the spot where the body of the wine seller had lain; then the stick became
violently agitated, and the man's pulse rose as though he were in an access
of fever. The same motions and symptoms manifested themselves when he reached
the place where the second victim had lain.
Having thus received his impression, Aymar left the cellar, and,
guided by his rod, or rather by an internal instinct, he ascended into the
shop, and then stepping into the street, he followed from one to another,
like a hound upon the scent, the track of the murderers. It conducted him
into the court of the archiepiscopal palace, across it, and down to the gate
of the Rhone. It was now evening, and the city gates being all closed, the
quest of blood was relinquished for the night.
Next morning Aymar returned to the scent. Accompanied by three officers,
he left the gate, and descended the right bank of the Rhone. The rod gave
indications of there having been three involved in the murder, and he pursued
the traces till two of them led to a gardener's cottage. Into this he
entered, and there he asserted with warmth, against the asseverations of the
proprietor to the contrary, that the fugitives had entered his room, had
seated themselves at his table, and had drunk wine out of one of the bottles
which he indicated. Aymar tested each of the household with his rod, to see
if they had been in contact with the murderers. The rod moved over the two
children only, aged respectively ten and nine years. These little things, on
being questioned, answered, with reluctance, that during their father's
absence on Sunday morning, against his express commands, they had left the
door open, and that two men, whom they described, had come in suddenly upon
them, and had seated themselves and made free with the wine in the bottle
pointed out by the man with the rod. This first verification of the talents
of Jacques Aymar convinced some of the sceptical, but the Procurateur Général
forbade the prosecution of the experiment till the man had been further
tested.
As already stated, a hedging bill had been discovered, on the scene of the
murder, smeared with blood, and unquestionably the weapon with which the
crime had been committed. Three bills from the same maker, and of precisely
the same description, were obtained, and the four were taken into a garden,
and secretly buried at intervals. Aymar was then brought, staff in hand, into
the garden, and conducted over the spots where lay the bills. The rod began
to vibrate as his feet stood upon the place where was concealed the bill
which had been used by the assassins, but was motionless elsewhere. Still
unsatisfied, the four bills were exhumed and concealed anew. The comptroller
of the province himself bandaged the sorcerer's eyes, and led him by the hand
from place to place. The divining rod showed no signs of movement till it
approached the blood-stained weapon, when it began to oscillate.
The magistrates were now so far satisfied as to agree that Jacques Aymar
should be authorized to follow the trail of the murderers, and have a company
of archers to follow him.
Guided by his rod, Aymar now recommenced his pursuit. He continued tracing
down the right bank of the Rhone till he came to half a league from the
bridge of Lyons. Here the footprints of three men were observed in the sand,
as though engaged in entering a boat. A rowing boat was obtained, and Aymar,
with his escort, descended the river; he found some difficulty in following
the trail upon water; still he was able, with a little care, to detect it. It
brought him under an arch of the bridge of Vienne, which boats rarely passed
beneath. This proved that the fugitives were without a guide. The way in
which this curious journey was made was singular. At intervals Aymar was put
ashore to test the banks with his rod, and ascertain whether the murderers
had landed. He discovered the places where they had slept, and indicated the
chairs or benches on which they had sat. In this manner, by slow degrees, he
arrived at the military camp of Sablon, between Vienne and Saint-Valier.
There Aymar felt violent agitation, his cheeks flushed, and his pulse beat
with rapidity. He penetrated the crowds of soldiers, but did not venture to
use his rod, lest the men should take it ill, and fall upon him. He could not
do more without special authority, and was constrained to return to Lyons.
The magistrates then provided him with the requisite powers, and he went back
to the camp. Now he declared that the murderers were not there. He
recommenced his pursuit, and descended the Rhone again as far as
Beaucaire.
On entering the town he ascertained by means of his rod that those whom he
was pursuing had parted company. He traversed several streets, then crowded
on account of the annual fair, and was brought to a standstill before the
prison doors. One of the murderers was within, he declared; he would track
the others afterwards. Having obtained permission to enter, he was brought
into the presence of fourteen or fifteen prisoners. Amongst these was a
hunchback, who had only an hour previously been incarcerated on account of a
theft he had committed at the fair. Aymar applied his rod to each of the
prisoners in succession: it turned upon the hunchback. The sorcerer
ascertained that the other two had left the town by a little path leading
into the Nismes road. Instead of following this track, he returned to Lyons
with the hunchback and the guard. At Lyons a triumph awaited him. The
hunchback had hitherto protested his innocence, and declared that he had
never set foot in Lyons. But as he was brought to that town by the way along
which Aymar had ascertained that he had left it, the fellow was recognized at
the different houses where he had lodged the night, or stopped for food. At
the little town of Bagnols, he was confronted with the host and hostess of a
tavern where he and his comrades had slept, and they swore to his identity,
and accurately described his companions: their description tallied with that
given by the children of the gardener. The wretched man was so confounded by
this recognition, that he avowed having staid there, a few days before, along
with two Provençals. These men, he said, were the criminals; he had been
their servant, and had only kept guard in the upper room whilst they
committed the murders in the cellar.
On his arrival in Lyons he was committed to prison, and his trial was
decided on. At his first interrogation he told his tale precisely as he had
related it before, with these additions: the murderers spoke patois, and had
purchased two bills. At ten o'clock in the evening all three had entered the
wine shop. The Provençals had a large bottle wrapped in straw, and they
persuaded the publican and his wife to descend with them into the cellar to
fill it, whilst he, the hunchback, acted as watch in the shop. The two men
murdered the wine-seller and his wife with their bills, and then mounted to
the shop, where they opened the coffer, and stole from it one hundred and
thirty crowns, eight louis-d'ors, and a silver belt. The crime accomplished,
they took refuge in the court of a large house,—this was the
archbishop's palace, indicated by Aymar,—and passed the night in it.
Next day, early, they left Lyons, and only stopped for a moment at a
gardener's cottage. Some way down the river, they found a boat moored to the
bank. This they loosed from its mooring and entered. They came ashore at the
spot pointed out by the man with the stick. They staid some days in the camp
at Sablon, and then went on to Beaucaire.
Aymar was now sent in quest of the other murderers. He resumed their trail
at the gate of Beaucaire, and that of one of them, after considerable
détours, led him to the prison doors of Beaucaire, and he asked to be
allowed to search among the prisoners for his man. This time he was mistaken.
The second fugitive was not within; but the jailer affirmed that a man whom
he described—and his description tallied with the known appearance of
one of the Provençals—had called at the gate shortly after the removal
of the hunchback to inquire after him, and on learning of his removal to
Lyons, had hurried off precipitately. Aymar now followed his track from the
prison, and this brought him to that of the third criminal. He pursued the
double scent for some days. But it became evident that the two culprits had
been alarmed at what had transpired in Beaucaire, and were flying from
France. Aymar traced them to the frontier, and then returned to Lyons.
On the 30th of August, 1692, the poor hunchback was, according to
sentence, broken on the wheel, in the Place des Terreaux. On his way to
execution he had to pass the wine shop. There the recorder publicly read his
sentence, which had been delivered by thirty judges. The criminal knelt and
asked pardon of the poor wretches in whose murder he was involved, after
which he continued his course to the place fixed for his execution.
It may be well here to give an account of the authorities for this
extraordinary story. There are three circumstantial accounts, and numerous
letters written by the magistrate who sat during the trial, and by an
eye-witness of the whole transaction, men honorable and disinterested, upon
whose veracity not a shadow of doubt was supposed to rest by their
contemporaries.
M. Chauvin, Doctor of Medicine, published a﹃Lettre à Mme. la Marquise
de Senozan, sur les moyens dont on s'est servi pour découvrir les complices
d'un assassinat commis à Lyon, le 5 Juillet, 1692.﹄Lyons, 1692. The
procès-verbal of the Procureur du Roi, M. de Vanini, is also extant,
and published in the Physique occulte of the Abbé de Vallemont.
Pierre Gamier, Doctor of Medicine of the University of Montpellier, wrote
a Dissertation physique en forme de lettre, à M. de Sève, seigneur de
Fléchères, on Jacques Aymar, printed the same year at Lyons, and
republished in the Histoire critique des pratiques superstitieuses du Père
Lebrun.
Doctor Chauvin was witness of nearly all the circumstances related, as was
also the Abbé Lagarde, who has written a careful account of the whole
transaction as far as to the execution of the hunchback.
Another eye-witness writes to the Abbé Bignon a letter printed by Lebrun
in his Histoire critique cited above.﹃The following circumstance
happened to me yesterday evening,﹄he says: "M. le Procureur du Roi here,
who, by the way, is one of the wisest and cleverest men in the country, sent
for me at six o'clock, and had me conducted to the scene of the murder. We
found there M. Grimaut, director of the customs, whom I knew to be a very
upright man, and a young attorney named Besson, with whom I am not
acquainted, but who M. le Procureur du Roi told me had the power of using the
rod as well as M. Grimaut. We descended into the cellar where the murder had
been committed, and where there were still traces of blood. Each time that M.
Grimaut and the attorney passed the spot where the murder had been
perpetrated, the rods they held in their hands began to turn, but ceased when
they stepped beyond the spot. We tried experiments for more than an hour, as
also with the bill, which M. le Procureur had brought along with him, and
they were satisfactory. I observed several curious facts in the attorney. The
rod in his hands was more violently moved than in those of M. Grimaut, and
when I placed one of my fingers in each of his hands, whilst the rod turned,
I felt the most extraordinary throbbings of the arteries in his palms. His
pulse was at fever heat. He sweated profusely, and at intervals he was
compelled to go into the court to obtain fresh air."
The Sieur Pauthot, Dean of the College of Medicine at Lyons, gave his
observations to the public as well. Some of them are as follows:﹃We began at
the cellar in which the murder had been committed; into this the man with the
rod (Aymar) shrank from entering, because he felt violent agitations which
overcame him when he used the stick over the place where the corpses of those
who had been assassinated had lain. On entering the cellar, the rod was put
in my hands, and arranged by the master as most suitable for operation; I
passed and repassed over the spot where the bodies had been found, but it
remained immovable, and I felt no agitation. A lady of rank and merit, who
was with us, took the rod after me; she felt it begin to move, and was
internally agitated. Then the owner of the rod resumed it, and, passing over
the same places, the stick rotated with such violence that it seemed easier
to break than to stop it. The peasant then quitted our company to faint away,
as was his wont after similar experiments. I followed him. He turned very
pale and broke into a profuse perspiration, whilst for a quarter of an hour
his pulse was violently troubled; indeed, the faintness was so considerable,
that they were obliged to dash water in his face and give him water to drink
in order to bring him round.﹄He then describes experiments made over the
bloody bill and others similar, which succeeded in the hands of Aymar and the
lady, but failed when he attempted them himself. Pierre Garnier, physician of
the medical college of Montpellier, appointed to that of Lyons, has also
written an account of what he saw, as mentioned above. He gives a curious
proof of Aymar's powers.
"M. le Lieutenant-Général having been robbed by one of his lackeys, seven
or eight months ago, and having lost by him twenty-five crowns which had been
taken out of one of the cabinets behind his library, sent for Aymar, and
asked him to discover the circumstances. Aymar went several times round the
chamber, rod in hand, placing one foot on the chairs, on the various articles
of furniture, and on two bureaux which are in the apartment, each of which
contains several drawers. He fixed on the very bureau and the identical
drawer out of which the money had been stolen. M. le Lieutenant-Général bade
him follow the track of the robber. He did so. With his rod he went out on a
new terrace, upon which the cabinet opens, thence back into the cabinet and
up to the fire, then into the library, and from thence he went direct up
stairs to the lackeys' sleeping apartment, when the rod guided him to one of
the beds, and turned over one side of the bed, remaining motionless over the
other. The lackeys then present cried out that the thief had slept on the
side indicated by the rod, the bed having been shared with another footman,
who occupied the further side." Garnier gives a lengthy account of various
experiments he made along with the Lieutenant-Général, the uncle of the same,
the Abbé de St. Remain, and M. de Puget, to detect whether there was
imposture in the man. But all their attempts failed to discover a trace of
deception. He gives a report of a verbal examination of Aymar which is
interesting. The man always replied with candor.
The report of the extraordinary discovery of murder made by the divining
rod at Lyons attracted the attention of Paris, and Aymar was ordered up to
the capital. There, however, his powers left him. The Prince de Condé
submitted him to various tests, and he broke down under every one. Five holes
were dug in the garden. In one was secreted gold, in another silver, in a
third silver and gold, in the fourth copper, and in the fifth stones. The rod
made no signs in presence of the metals, and at last actually began to move
over the buried pebbles. He was sent to Chantilly to discover the
perpetrators of a theft of trout made in the ponds of the park. He went round
the water, rod in hand, and it turned at spots where he said the fish had
been drawn out. Then, following the track of the thief, it led him to the
cottage of one of the keepers, but did not move over any of the individuals
then in the house. The keeper himself was absent, but arrived late at night,
and, on hearing what was said, he roused Aymar from his bed, insisting on
having his innocence vindicated. The divining rod, however, pronounced him
guilty, and the poor fellow took to his heels, much upon the principle
recommended by Montesquieu a while after. Said he, "If you are accused of
having stolen the towers of Notre-Dame, bolt at once."
A peasant, taken at haphazard from the street, was brought to the sorcerer
as one suspected. The rod turned slightly, and Aymar declared that the man
did not steal the fish, but ate of them. A boy was then introduced, who was
said to be the keeper's son. The rod rotated violently at once. This was the
finishing stroke, and Aymar was sent away by the Prince in disgrace. It now
transpired that the theft of fish had taken place seven years before, and the
lad was no relation of the keeper, but a country boy who had only been in
Chantilly eight or ten months. M. Goyonnot, Recorder of the King's Council,
broke a window in his house, and sent for the diviner, to whom he related a
story of his having been robbed of valuables during the night. Aymar
indicated the broken window as the means whereby the thief had entered the
house, and pointed out the window by which he had left it with the booty. As
no such robbery had been committed, Aymar was turned out of the house as an
impostor. A few similar cases brought him into such disrepute that he was
obliged to leave Paris, and return to Grenoble.
Some years after, he was made use of by the Maréchal Montrevel, in his
cruel pursuit of the Camisards.
Was Aymar an impostor from first to last, or did his powers fail him in
Paris? and was it only then that he had recourse to fraud?
Much may be said in favor of either supposition. His exposé at
Paris tells heavily against him, but need not be regarded as conclusive
evidence of imposture throughout his career. If he really did possess the
powers he claimed, it is not to be supposed that these existed in full vigor
under all conditions; and Paris is a place most unsuitable for testing them,
built on artificial soil, and full of disturbing influences of every
description. It has been remarked with others who used the rod, that their
powers languished under excitement, and that the faculties had to be in
repose, the attention to be concentrated on the subject of inquiry, or the
action—nervous, magnetic, or electrical, or what you will—was
impeded.
Now, Paris, visited for the first time by a poor peasant, its
salons open to him, dazzling him with their splendor, and the novelty
of finding himself in the midst of princes, dukes, marquises, and their
families, not only may have agitated the countryman to such an extent as to
deprive him of his peculiar faculty, but may have led him into simulating
what he felt had departed from him, at the moment when he was under the eyes
of the grandees of the Court. We have analogous cases in Bleton and Angelique
Cottin. The former was a hydroscope, who fell into convulsions whenever he
passed over running water. This peculiarity was noticed in him when a child
of seven years old. When brought to Paris, he failed signally to detect the
presence of water conveyed underground by pipes and conduits, but he
pretended to feel the influence of water where there certainly was none.
Angelique Cottin was a poor girl, highly charged with electricity. Any one
touching her received a violent shock; one medical gentleman, having seated
her on his knee, was knocked clean out of his chair by the electric fluid,
which thus exhibited its sense of propriety. But the electric condition of
Angelique became feebler as she approached Paris, and failed her altogether
in the capital.
I believe that the imagination is the principal motive force in those who
use the divining rod; but whether it is so solely, I am unable to decide. The
powers of nature are so mysterious and inscrutable that we must be cautious
in limiting them, under abnormal conditions, to the ordinary laws of
experience.
How to hold a divining rod.
The manner in which the rod was used by certain persons renders
self-deception possible. The rod is generally of hazel, and is forked like a
Y; the forefingers are placed against the diverging arms of the rod, and the
elbows are brought back against the side; thus the implement is held in front
of the operator, delicately balanced before the pit of the stomach at a
distance of about eight inches. Now, if the pressure of the balls of the
digits be in the least relaxed, the stalk of the rod will naturally fall. It
has been assumed by some, that a restoration of the pressure will bring the
stem up again, pointing towards the operator, and a little further pressure
will elevate it into a perpendicular position. A relaxation of force will
again lower it, and thus the rotation observed in the rod be maintained. I
confess myself unable to accomplish this. The lowering of the leg of the rod
is easy enough, but no efforts of mine to produce a revolution on its axis
have as yet succeeded. The muscles which would contract the fingers upon the
arms of the stick, pass the shoulder; and it is worthy of remark that one of
the medical men who witnessed the experiments made on Bleton the hydroscope,
expressly alludes to a slight rising of the shoulders during the rotation of
the divining rod.
But the manner of using the rod was by no means identical in all cases.
If, in all cases, it had simply been balanced between the fingers, some
probability might be given to the suggestion above made, that the rotation
was always effected by the involuntary action of the muscles.
The usual manner of holding the rod, however, precluded such a
possibility. The most ordinary use consisted in taking a forked stick in such
a manner that the palms were turned upwards, and the fingers closed upon the
branching arms of the rod. Some required the normal position of the rod to be
horizontal, others elevated the point, others again depressed it.
If the implement were straight, it was held in a similar manner, but the
hands were brought somewhat together, so as to produce a slight arc in the
rod. Some who practised rhabdomancy sustained this species of rod between
their thumbs and forefingers; or else the thumb and forefingers were closed,
and the rod rested on their points; or again it reposed on the flat of the
hand, or on the back, the hand being held vertically and the rod held in
equilibrium.
A third species of divining rod consisted in a straight staff cut in two:
one extremity of the one half was hollowed out, the other half was sharpened
at the end, and this end was inserted in the hollow, and the pointed stick
rotated in the cavity.
Positions of the Hands.
From "Lettres qui découvrent l'Illusion des Philosophes sur la Baguette."
Paris, 1693.
The way in which Bleton used his rod is thus minutely described: "He does
not grasp it, nor warm it in his hands, and he does not regard with
preference a hazel branch lately cut and full of sap. He places horizontally
between his forefingers a rod of any kind given to him, or picked up in the
road, of any sort of wood except elder, fresh or dry, not always forked, but
sometimes merely bent. If it is straight, it rises slightly at the
extremities by little jerks, but does not turn. If bent, it revolves on its
axis with more or less rapidity, in more or less time, according to the
quantity and current of the water. I counted from thirty to thirty-five
revolutions in a minute, and afterwards as many as eighty. A curious
phenomenon is, that Bleton is able to make the rod turn between another
person's fingers, even without seeing it or touching it, by approaching his
body towards it when his feet stand over a subterranean watercourse. It is
true, however, that the motion is much less strong and less durable in other
fingers than his own. If Bleton stood on his head, and placed the rod between
his feet, though he felt strongly the peculiar sensations produced in him by
flowing water, yet the rod remained stationary. If he were insulated on
glass, silk, or wax, the sensations were less vivid, and the rotation of the
stick ceased."
But this experiment failed in Paris, under circumstances which either
proved that Bleton's imagination produced the movement, or that his integrity
was questionable. It is quite possible that in many instances the action of
the muscles is purely involuntary, and is attributable to the imagination, so
that the operator deceives himself as well as others.
This is probably the explanation of the story of Mdlle. Olivet, a young
lady of tender conscience, who was a skilful performer with the divining rod,
but shrank from putting her powers in operation, lest she should be indulging
in unlawful acts. She consulted the Père Lebrun, author of a work already
referred to in this paper, and he advised her to ask God to withdraw the
power from her, if the exercise of it was harmful to her spiritual condition.
She entered into retreat for two days, and prayed with fervor. Then she made
her communion, asking God what had been recommended to her at the moment when
she received the Host. In the afternoon of the same day she made experiment
with her rod, and found that it would no longer operate. The girl had strong
faith in it before—a faith coupled with fear; and as long as that faith
was strong in her, the rod moved; now she believed that the faculty was taken
from her; and the power ceased with the loss of her faith.
If the divining rod is put in motion by any other force except the
involuntary action of the muscles, we must confine its powers to the property
of indicating the presence of flowing water. There are numerous instances of
hydroscopes thus detecting the existence of a spring, or of a subterranean
watercourse; the most remarkably endowed individuals of this description are
Jean-Jacques Parangue, born near Marseilles, in 1760, who experienced a
horror when near water which no one else perceived. He was endowed with the
faculty of seeing water through the ground, says l'Abbé Sauri, who gives his
history. Jenny Leslie, a Scotch girl, about the same date claimed similar
powers. In 1790, Pennet, a native of Dauphiné, attracted attention in Italy,
but when carefully tested by scientific men in Padua, his attempts to
discover buried metals failed; at Florence he was detected in an endeavor to
find out by night what had been secreted to test his powers on the morrow.
Vincent Amoretti was an Italian, who underwent peculiar sensations when
brought in proximity to water, coal, and salt; he was skilful in the use of
the rod, but made no public exhibition of his powers.
The rod is still employed, I have heard it asserted, by Cornish miners;
but I have never been able to ascertain that such is really the case. The
mining captains whom I have questioned invariably repudiated all knowledge of
its use.
In Wiltshire, however, it is still employed for the purpose of detecting
water; and the following extract from a letter I have just received will show
that it is still in vogue on the Continent:—
"I believe the use of the divining rod for discovering
springs of water has by no means been confined to mediæval times; for I was
personally acquainted with a lady, now deceased, who has successfully
practised with it in this way. She was a very clever and accomplished woman;
Scotch by birth and education; by no means credulous; possibly a little
imaginative, for she wrote not unsuccessfully; and of a remarkably open and
straightforward disposition. Captain C——, her husband, had a
large estate in Holstein, near Lubeck, supporting a considerable population;
and whether for the wants of the people or for the improvement of the land,
it now and then happened that an additional well was needed.
"On one of these occasions a man was sent for who made a
regular profession of finding water by the divining rod; there happened to be
a large party staying at the house, and the whole company turned out to see
the fun. The rod gave indications in the usual way, and water was ultimately
found at the spot. Mrs. C——, utterly sceptical, took the rod into
her own hands to make experiment, believing that she would prove the man an
impostor; and she said afterwards she was never more frightened in her life
than when it began to move, on her walking over the spring. Several other
gentlemen and ladies tried it, but it was quite inactive in their hands.
'Well,' said the host to his wife, 'we shall have no occasion to send for the
man again, as you are such an adept.'
"Some months after this, water was wanted in another part of
the estate, and it occurred to Mrs. C—— that she would use the
rod again. After some trials, it again gave decided indications, and a well
was begun and carried down a very considerable depth. At last she began to
shrink from incurring more expense, but the laborers had implicit faith; and
begged to be allowed to persevere. Very soon the water burst up with such
force that the men escaped with difficulty; and this proved afterwards the
most unfailing spring for miles round.
"You will take the above for what it is worth; the facts I
have given are undoubtedly true, whatever conclusions may be drawn from them.
I do not propose that you should print my narrative, but I think in these
cases personal testimony, even indirect, is more useful in forming one's
opinion than a hundred old volumes. I did not hear it from Mrs.
C——'s own lips, but I was sufficiently acquainted with her to
form a very tolerable estimate of her character; and my wife, who has known
her intimately from her own childhood, was in her younger days often staying
with her for months together."
I remember having been much perplexed by reading a series of experiments
made with a pendulous ring over metals, by a Mr. Mayo: he ascertained that it
oscillated in various directions under peculiar circumstances, when suspended
by a thread over the ball of the thumb. I instituted a series of experiments,
and was surprised to find the ring vibrate in an unaccountable manner in
opposite directions over different metals. On consideration, I closed my eyes
whilst the ring was oscillating over gold, and on opening them I found that
it had become stationary. I got a friend to change the metals whilst I was
blindfolded—the ring no longer vibrated. I was thus enabled to judge of
the involuntary action of muscles, quite sufficient to have deceived an
eminent medical man like Mr. Mayo, and to have perplexed me till I succeeded
in solving the mystery.[24]
[24] A similar series of experiments was undertaken, as I
learned afterwards, by M. Chevreuil in Paris, with similar results.
IV. — THE SEVEN SLEEPERS OF EPHESUS
ONE of the most picturesque myths of ancient days is that
which forms the subject of this article. It is thus told by Jacques de
Voragine, in his "Legenda Aurea:"—
"The seven sleepers were natives of Ephesus. The Emperor
Decius, who persecuted the Christians, having come to Ephesus, ordered the
erection of temples in the city, that all might come and sacrifice before
him; and he commanded that the Christians should be sought out and given
their choice, either to worship the idols, or to die. So great was the
consternation in the city, that the friend denounced his friend, the father
his son, and the son his father.
"Now there were in Ephesus seven Christians, Maximian,
Malchus, Marcian, Dionysius, John, Serapion, and Constantine by name. These
refused to sacrifice to the idols, and remained in their houses praying and
fasting. They were accused before Decius, and they confessed themselves to be
Christians. However, the emperor gave them a little time to consider what
line they would adopt. They took advantage of this reprieve to dispense their
goods among the poor, and then they retired, all seven, to Mount Celion,
where they determined to conceal themselves.
"One of their number, Malchus, in the disguise of a
physician, went to the town to obtain victuals. Decius, who had been absent
from Ephesus for a little while, returned, and gave orders for the seven to
be sought. Malchus, having escaped from the town, fled, full of fear, to his
comrades, and told them of the emperor's fury. They were much alarmed; and
Malchus handed them the loaves he had bought, bidding them eat, that,
fortified by the food, they might have courage in the time of trial. They
ate, and then, as they sat weeping and speaking to one another, by the will
of God they fell asleep.
"The pagans sought everywhere, but could not find them, and
Decius was greatly irritated at their escape. He had their parents brought
before him, and threatened them with death if they did not reveal the place
of concealment; but they could only answer that the seven young men had
distributed their goods to the poor, and that they were quite ignorant as to
their whereabouts.
"Decius, thinking it possible that they might be hiding in a
cavern, blocked up the mouth with stones, that they might perish of
hunger.
"Three hundred and sixty years passed, and in the thirtieth
year of the reign of Theodosius, there broke forth a heresy denying the
resurrection of the dead....
"Now, it happened that an Ephesian was building a stable on
the side of Mount Celion, and finding a pile of stones handy, he took them
for his edifice, and thus opened the mouth of the cave. Then the seven
sleepers awoke, and it was to them as if they had slept but a single night.
They began to ask Malchus what decision Decius had given concerning them.
"'He is going to hunt us down, so as to force us to
sacrifice to the idols,' was his reply. 'God knows,' replied Maximian, 'we
shall never do that.' Then exhorting his companions, he urged Malchus to go
back to the town to buy some more bread, and at the same time to obtain fresh
information. Malchus took five coins and left the cavern. On seeing the
stones he was filled with astonishment; however, he went on towards the city;
but what was his bewilderment, on approaching the gate, to see over it a
cross! He went to another gate, and there he beheld the same sacred sign; and
so he observed it over each gate of the city. He believed that he was
suffering from the effects of a dream. Then he entered Ephesus, rubbing his
eyes, and he walked to a baker's shop. He heard people using our Lord's name,
and he was the more perplexed. 'Yesterday, no one dared pronounce the name of
Jesus, and now it is on every one's lips. Wonderful! I can hardly believe
myself to be in Ephesus.' He asked a passer-by the name of the city, and on
being told it was Ephesus, he was thunderstruck. Now he entered a baker's
shop, and laid down his money. The baker, examining the coin, inquired
whether he had found a treasure, and began to whisper to some others in the
shop. The youth, thinking that he was discovered, and that they were about to
conduct him to the emperor, implored them to let him alone, offering to leave
loaves and money if he might only be suffered to escape. But the shop-men,
seizing him, said, 'Whoever you are, you have found a treasure; show us where
it is, that we may share it with you, and then we will hide you.' Malchus was
too frightened to answer. So they put a rope round his neck, and drew him
through the streets into the market-place. The news soon spread that the
young man had discovered a great treasure, and there was presently a vast
crowd about him. He stoutly protested his innocence. No one recognized him,
and his eyes, ranging over the faces which surrounded him, could not see one
which he had known, or which was in the slightest degree familiar to him.
"St. Martin, the bishop, and Antipater, the governor, having
heard of the excitement, ordered the young man to be brought before them,
along with the bakers.
"The bishop and the governor asked him where he had found
the treasure, and he replied that he had found none, but that the few coins
were from his own purse. He was next asked whence he came. He replied that he
was a native of Ephesus, 'if this be Ephesus.'
"'Send for your relations—your parents, if they live
here,' ordered the governor.
"'They live here, certainly,' replied the youth; and he
mentioned their names. No such names were known in the town. Then the
governor exclaimed, 'How dare you say that this money belonged to your
parents when it dates back three hundred and seventy-seven years,[25] and is
as old as the beginning of the reign of Decius, and it is utterly unlike our
modern coinage? Do you think to impose on the old men and sages of Ephesus?
Believe me, I shall make you suffer the severities of the law till you show
where you made the discovery.'
[25] This calculation is sadly inaccurate.
"'I implore you,' cried Malchus, 'in the name of God, answer
me a few questions, and then I will answer yours. Where is the Emperor Decius
gone to?'
"The bishop answered, 'My son, there is no emperor of that
name; he who was thus called died long ago.'
"Malchus replied, 'All I hear perplexes me more and more.
Follow me, and I will show you my comrades, who fled with me into a cave of
Mount Celion, only yesterday, to escape the cruelty of Decius. I will lead
you to them.'
"The bishop turned to the governor. 'The hand of God is
here,' he said. Then they followed, and a great crowd after them. And Malchus
entered first into the cavern to his companions, and the bishop after him....
And there they saw the martyrs seated in the cave, with their faces fresh and
blooming as roses; so all fell down and glorified God. The bishop and the
governor sent notice to Theodosius, and he hurried to Ephesus. All the
inhabitants met him and conducted him to the cavern. As soon as the saints
beheld the emperor, their faces shone like the sun, and the emperor gave
thanks unto God, and embraced them, and said, 'I see you, as though I saw the
Savior restoring Lazarus.' Maximian replied, 'Believe us! for the faith's
sake, God has resuscitated us before the great resurrection day, in order
that you may believe firmly in the resurrection of the dead. For as the child
is in its mother's womb living and not suffering, so have we lived without
suffering, fast asleep.' And having thus spoken, they bowed their heads, and
their souls returned to their Maker. The emperor, rising, bent over them and
embraced them weeping. He gave them orders for golden reliquaries to be made,
but that night they appeared to him in a dream, and said that hitherto they
had slept in the earth, and that in the earth they desired to sleep on till
God should raise them again."
Such is the beautiful story. It seems to have travelled to us from the
East. Jacobus Sarugiensis, a Mesopotamian bishop, in the fifth or sixth
century, is said to have been the first to commit it to writing. Gregory of
Tours (De Glor. Mart. i. 9) was perhaps the first to introduce it to Europe.
Dionysius of Antioch (ninth century) told the story in Syrian, and Photius of
Constantinople reproduced it, with the remark that Mahomet had adopted it
into the Koran. Metaphrastus alludes to it as well; in the tenth century
Eutychius inserted it in his annals of Arabia; it is found in the Coptic and
the Maronite books, and several early historians, as Paulus Diaconus,
Nicephorus, &c., have inserted it in their works.
A poem on the Seven Sleepers was composed by a trouvère named Chardri, and
is mentioned by M. Fr. Michel in his﹃Rapports Ministre de l'Instruction
Public;﹄a German poem on the same subject, of the thirteenth century, in 935
verses, has been published by M. Karajan; and the Spanish poet, Augustin
Morreto, composed a drama on it, entitled "Los Siete Durmientes," which is
inserted in the 19th volume of the rare work, "Comedias Nuevas Escogidas de
los Mejores Ingenios."
Mahomet has somewhat improved on the story. He has made the Sleepers
prophesy his coming, and he has given them a dog named Kratim, or Kratimir,
which sleeps with them, and which is endowed with the gift of prophecy.
As a special favor this dog is to be one of the ten animals to be admitted
into his paradise, the others being Jonah's whale, Solomon's ant, Ishmael's
ram, Abraham's calf, the Queen of Sheba's ass, the prophet Salech's camel,
Moses' ox, Belkis' cuckoo, and Mahomet's ass.
It was perhaps too much for the Seven Sleepers to ask, that their bodies
should be left to rest in earth. In ages when saintly relics were valued
above gold and precious stones, their request was sure to be shelved; and so
we find that their remains were conveyed to Marseilles in a large stone
sarcophagus, which is still exhibited in St. Victor's Church. In the Musæum
Victorium at Rome is a curious and ancient representation of them in a cement
of sulphur and plaster. Their names are engraved beside them, together with
certain attributes. Near Constantine and John are two clubs, near Maximian a
knotty club, near Malchus and Martinian two axes, near Serapion a burning
torch, and near Danesius or Dionysius a great nail, such as those spoken of
by Horace (Lib. 1, Od. 3) and St. Paulinus (Nat. 9, or Carm. 24) as having
been used for torture.
In this group of figures, the seven are represented as young, without
beards, and indeed in ancient martyrologies they are frequently called
boys.
It has been inferred from this curious plaster representation, that the
seven may have suffered under Decius, A. D. 250, and have been buried in the
afore-mentioned cave; whilst the discovery and translation of their relics
under Theodosius, in 479, may have given rise to the fable. And this I think
probable enough. The story of long sleepers and the number seven connected
with it is ancient enough, and dates from heathen mythology.
Like many another ancient myth, it was laid hold of by Christian hands and
baptized.
Pliny relates the story of Epimenides the epic poet, who, when tending his
sheep one hot day, wearied and oppressed with slumber, retreated into a cave,
where he fell asleep. After fifty-seven years he awoke, and found every thing
changed. His brother, whom he had left a stripling, was now a hoary man.
Epimenides was reckoned one of the seven sages by those who exclude
Periander. He flourished in the time of Solon. After his death, at the age of
two hundred and eighty-nine, he was revered as a god, and honored especially
by the Athenians.
This story is a version of the older legend of the perpetual sleep of the
shepherd Endymion, who was thus preserved in unfading youth and beauty by
Jupiter.
According to an Arabic legend, St. George thrice rose from his grave, and
was thrice slain.
In Scandinavian mythology we have Siegfrid or Sigurd thus resting, and
awaiting his call to come forth and fight. Charlemagne sleeps in the Odenberg
in Hess, or in the Untersberg near Salzburg, seated on his throne, with his
crown on his head and his sword at his side, waiting till the times of
Antichrist are fulfilled, when he will wake and burst forth to avenge the
blood of the saints. Ogier the Dane, or Olger Dansk, will in like manner
shake off his slumber and come forth from the dream-land of Avallon to avenge
the right—O that he had shown himself in the Schleswig-Holstein
war!
Well do I remember, as a child, contemplating with wondering awe the great
Kyffhäuserberg in Thuringia, for therein, I was told, slept Frederic
Barbarossa and his six knights. A shepherd once penetrated into the heart of
the mountain by a cave, and discovered therein a hall where sat the emperor
at a stone table, and his red beard had grown through the slab. At the tread
of the shepherd Frederic awoke from his slumber, and asked, "Do the ravens
still fly over the mountains?"
"Sire, they do."
"Then we must sleep another hundred years."
But when his beard has wound itself thrice round the table, then will the
emperor awake with his knights, and rush forth to release Germany from its
bondage, and exalt it to the first place among the kingdoms of Europe.
In Switzerland slumber three Tells at Rutli, near the Vierwaldstätter-see,
waiting for the hour of their country's direst need. A shepherd crept into
the cave where they rest. The third Tell rose and asked the time. "Noon,"
replied the shepherd lad. "The time is not yet come," said Tell, and lay down
again.
In Scotland, beneath the Eilden hills, sleeps Thomas of Erceldoune; the
murdered French who fell in the Sicilian Vespers at Palermo are also
slumbering till the time is come when they may wake to avenge themselves.
When Constantinople fell into the hands of the Turks, a priest was
celebrating the sacred mysteries at the great silver altar of St. Sophia. The
celebrant cried to God to protect the sacred host from profanation. Then the
wall opened, and he entered, bearing the Blessed Sacrament. It closed on him,
and there he is sleeping with his head bowed before the Body of Our Lord,
waiting till the Turk is cast out of Constantinople, and St. Sophia is
released from its profanation. God speed the time!
In Bohemia sleep three miners deep in the heart of the Kuttenberg. In
North America Rip Van Winkle passed twenty years slumbering in the Katskill
mountains. In Portugal it is believed that Sebastian, the chivalrous young
monarch who did his best to ruin his country by his rash invasion of Morocco,
is sleeping somewhere; but he will wake again to be his country's deliverer
in the hour of need. Olaf Tryggvason is waiting a similar occasion in Norway.
Even Napoleon Bonaparte is believed among some of the French peasantry to be
sleeping on in a like manner.
St. Hippolytus relates that St. John the Divine is slumbering at Ephesus,
and Sir John Mandeville relates the circumstances as follows:
"From Pathmos men gone unto Ephesim a fair citee and nyghe
to the see. And there dyede Seynte Johne, and was buryed behynde the highe
Awtiere, in a toumbe. And there is a faire chirche. For Christene mene weren
wont to holden that place alweyes. And in the tombe of Seynt John is noughte
but manna, that is clept Aungeles mete. For his body was translated into
Paradys. And Turkes holden now alle that place and the citee and the Chirche.
And all Asie the lesse is yclept Turkye. And ye shalle undrestond, that Seynt
Johne bid make his grave there in his Lyf, and leyd himself there-inne all
quyk. And therefore somme men seyn, that he dyed noughte, but that he resteth
there till the Day of Doom. And forsoothe there is a gret marveule: For men
may see there the erthe of the tombe apertly many tymes steren and moven, as
there weren quykke thinges undre."
The connection of this legend of St. John with Ephesus may have had
something to do with turning the seven martyrs of that city into seven
sleepers.
The annals of Iceland relate that, in 1403, a Finn of the name of
Fethmingr, living in Halogaland, in the North of Norway, happening to enter a
cave, fell asleep, and woke not for three whole years, lying with his bow and
arrows at his side, untouched by bird or beast.
There certainly are authentic accounts of persons having slept for an
extraordinary length of time, but I shall not mention any, as I believe the
legend we are considering, not to have been an exaggeration of facts, but a
Christianized myth of paganism. The fact of the number seven being so
prominent in many of the tales, seems to lead to this conclusion. Barbarossa
changes his position every seven years. Charlemagne starts in his chair at
similar intervals. Olger Dansk stamps his iron mace on the floor once every
seven years. Olaf Redbeard in Sweden uncloses his eyes at precisely the same
distances of time.
I believe that the mythological core of this picturesque legend is the
repose of the earth through the seven winter months. In the North, Frederic
and Charlemagne certainly replace Odin.
The German and Scandinavian still heathen legends represent the heroes as
about to issue forth for the defence of Fatherland in the hour of direst
need. The converted and Christianized tale brings the martyr youths forth in
the hour when a heresy is afflicting the Church, that they may destroy the
heresy by their witness to the truth of the Resurrection.
If there is something majestic in the heathen myth, there are singular
grace and beauty in the Christian tale, teaching, as it does, such a glorious
doctrine; but it is surpassed in delicacy by the modern form which the same
myth has assumed—a form which is a real transformation, leaving the
doctrine taught the same. It has been made into a romance by Hoffman, and is
versified by Trinius. I may perhaps be allowed to translate with some freedom
the poem of the latter:—
In an ancient shaft of Falun
Year by year a body lay,
God-preserved, as though a treasure,
Kept unto the waking day.
Not the turmoil, nor the passions,
Of the busy world o'erhead,
Sounds of war, or peace rejoicings,
Could disturb the placid dead.
Once a youthful miner, whistling,
Hewed the chamber, now his tomb:
Crash! the rocky fragments tumbled,
Closed him in abysmal gloom.
Sixty years passed by, ere miners
Toiling, hundred fathoms deep,
Broke upon the shaft where rested
That poor miner in his sleep.
As the gold-grains lie untarnished
In the dingy soil and sand,
Till they gleam and flicker, stainless,
In the digger's sifting hand;—
As the gem in virgin brilliance
Rests, till ushered into day;—
So uninjured, uncorrupted,
Fresh and fair the body lay.
And the miners bore it upward,
Laid it in the yellow sun;
Up, from out the neighboring houses,
Fast the curious peasants run.
"Who is he?" with eyes they question;
"Who is he?" they ask aloud;
Hush! a wizened hag comes hobbling,
Panting, through the wondering crowd.
O! the cry,—half joy, half sorrow,—
As she flings her at his side:
"John! the sweetheart of my girlhood,
Here am I, am I, thy bride.
"Time on thee has left no traces,
Death from wear has shielded thee;
I am agéd, worn, and wasted,
O! what life has done to me!"
Then his smooth, unfurrowed forehead
Kissed that ancient withered crone;
And the Death which had divided
Now united them in one.
V. — WILLIAM TELL
I SUPPOSE that most people regard William Tell, the hero of
Switzerland, as an historical character, and visit the scenes made memorable
by his exploits, with corresponding interest, when they undertake the regular
Swiss round.
It is one of the painful duties of the antiquarian to dispel many a
popular belief, and to probe the groundlessness of many an historical
statement. The antiquarian is sometimes disposed to ask with Pilate,﹃What is
truth?﹄when he finds historical facts crumbling beneath his touch into
mythological fables; and he soon learns to doubt and question the most
emphatic declarations of, and claims to, reliability.
Sir Walter Raleigh, in his prison, was composing the second volume of his
History of the World. Leaning on the sill of his window, he meditated on the
duties of the historian to mankind, when suddenly his attention was attracted
by a disturbance in the court-yard before his cell. He saw one man strike
another whom he supposed by his dress to be an officer; the latter at once
drew his sword, and ran the former through the body. The wounded man felled
his adversary with a stick, and then sank upon the pavement. At this juncture
the guard came up, and carried off the officer insensible, and then the
corpse of the man who had been run through.
Next day Raleigh was visited by an intimate friend, to whom he related the
circumstances of the quarrel and its issue. To his astonishment, his friend
unhesitatingly declared that the prisoner had mistaken the whole series of
incidents which had passed before his eyes.
The supposed officer was not an officer at all, but the servant of a
foreign ambassador; it was he who had dealt the first blow; he had not drawn
his sword, but the other had snatched it from his side, and had run
him through the body before any one could interfere; whereupon a
stranger from among the crowd knocked the murderer down with his stick, and
some of the foreigners belonging to the ambassador's retinue carried off the
corpse. The friend of Raleigh added that government had ordered the arrest
and immediate trial of the murderer, as the man assassinated was one of the
principal servants of the Spanish ambassador.
"Excuse me," said Raleigh, "but I cannot have been deceived as you
suppose, for I was eye-witness to the events which took place under my own
window, and the man fell there on that spot where you see a paving-stone
standing up above the rest."
"My dear Raleigh," replied his friend, "I was sitting on that stone when
the fray took place, and I received this slight scratch on my cheek in
snatching the sword from the murderer; and upon my word of honor, you have
been deceived upon every particular."
Sir Walter, when alone, took up the second volume of his History, which
was in MS., and contemplating it, thought—"If I cannot believe my own
eyes, how can I be assured of the truth of a tithe of the events which
happened ages before I was born?" and he flung the manuscript into the
fire.[26]
[26] This anecdote is taken from the Journal de
Paris, May, 1787; but whence did the Journal obtain it?
Now, I think that I can show that the story of William Tell is as fabulous
as—what shall I say? any other historical event.
It is almost too well known to need repetition.
In the year 1307, Gessler, Vogt of the Emperor Albert of Hapsburg, set a
hat on a pole, as symbol of imperial power, and ordered every one who passed
by to do obeisance towards it. A mountaineer of the name of Tell boldly
traversed the space before it without saluting the abhorred symbol. By
Gessler's command he was at once seized and brought before him. As Tell was
known to be an expert archer, he was ordered, by way of punishment, to shoot
an apple off the head of his own son. Finding remonstrance vain, he
submitted. The apple was placed on the child's head, Tell bent his bow, the
arrow sped, and apple and arrow fell together to the ground. But the Vogt
noticed that Tell, before shooting, had stuck another arrow into his belt,
and he inquired the reason.
"It was for you," replied the sturdy archer. "Had I shot my child, know
that it would not have missed your heart."
This event, observe, took place in the beginning of the fourteenth
century. But Saxo Grammaticus, a Danish writer of the twelfth century, tells
the story of a hero of his own country, who lived in the tenth century. He
relates the incident in horrible style as follows:—
"Nor ought what follows to be enveloped in silence. Toki,
who had for some time been in the king's service, had, by his deeds,
surpassing those of his comrades, made enemies of his virtues. One day, when
he had drunk too much, he boasted to those who sat at table with him, that
his skill in archery was such, that with the first shot of an arrow he could
hit the smallest apple set on the top of a stick at a considerable distance.
His detractors, hearing this, lost no time in conveying what he had said to
the king (Harald Bluetooth). But the wickedness of this monarch soon
transformed the confidence of the father to the jeopardy of the son, for he
ordered the dearest pledge of his life to stand in place of the stick, from
whom, if the utterer of the boast did not at his first shot strike down the
apple, he should with his head pay the penalty of having made an idle boast.
The command of the king urged the soldier to do this, which was so much more
than he had undertaken, the detracting artifices of the others having taken
advantage of words spoken when he was hardly sober. As soon as the boy was
led forth, Toki carefully admonished him to receive the whir of the arrow as
calmly as possible, with attentive ears, and without moving his head, lest by
a slight motion of the body he should frustrate the experience of his
well-tried skill. He also made him stand with his back towards him, lest he
should be frightened at the sight of the arrow. Then he drew three arrows
from his quiver, and the very first he shot struck the proposed mark. Toki
being asked by the king why he had taken so many more arrows out of his
quiver, when he was to make but one trial with his bow, 'That I might avenge
on thee,' he replied, 'the error of the first, by the points of the others,
lest my innocence might happen to be afflicted, and thy injustice go
unpunished.'"
The same incident is told of Egil, brother of the mythical Velundr, in the
Saga of Thidrik.
In Norwegian history also it appears with variations again and again. It
is told of King Olaf the Saint (d. 1030), that, desiring the conversion of a
brave heathen named Eindridi, he competed with him in various athletic
sports; he swam with him, wrestled, and then shot with him. The king dared
Eindridi to strike a writing-tablet from off his son's head with an arrow.
Eindridi prepared to attempt the difficult shot. The king bade two men bind
the eyes of the child and hold the napkin, so that he might not move when he
heard the whistle of the arrow. The king aimed first, and the arrow grazed
the lad's head. Eindridi then prepared to shoot; but the mother of the boy
interfered, and persuaded the king to abandon this dangerous test of skill.
In this version, also, Eindridi is prepared to revenge himself on the king,
should the child be injured.
But a closer approximation still to the Tell myth is found in the life of
Hemingr, another Norse archer, who was challenged by King Harald, Sigurd's
son (d. 1066). The story is thus told:—
"The island was densely overgrown with wood, and the people
went into the forest. The king took a spear and set it with its point in the
soil, then he laid an arrow on the string and shot up into the air. The arrow
turned in the air and came down upon the spear-shaft and stood up in it.
Hemingr took another arrow and shot up; his was lost to sight for some while,
but it came back and pierced the nick of the king's arrow.... Then the king
took a knife and stuck it into an oak; he next drew his bow and planted an
arrow in the haft of the knife. Thereupon Hemingr took his arrows. The king
stood by him and said, 'They are all inlaid with gold; you are a capital
workman.' Hemingr answered, 'They are not my manufacture, but are presents.'
He shot, and his arrow cleft the haft, and the point entered the socket of
the blade.
"'We must have a keener contest,' said the king, taking an
arrow and flushing with anger; then he laid the arrow on the string and drew
his bow to the farthest, so that the horns were nearly brought to meet. Away
flashed the arrow, and pierced a tender twig. All said that this was a most
astonishing feat of dexterity. But Hemingr shot from a greater distance, and
split a hazel nut. All were astonished to see this. Then said the king, 'Take
a nut and set it on the head of your brother Bjorn, and aim at it from
precisely the same distance. If you miss the mark, then your life goes.'
"Hemingr answered, 'Sire, my life is at your disposal, but I
will not adventure that shot.' Then out spake Bjorn—'Shoot, brother,
rather than die yourself.' Hemingr said, 'Have you the pluck to stand quite
still without shrinking?' 'I will do my best,' said Bjorn. 'Then let the king
stand by,' said Hemingr, 'and let him see whether I touch the nut.'
"The king agreed, and bade Oddr Ufeigs' son stand by Bjorn,
and see that the shot was fair. Hemingr then went to the spot fixed for him
by the king, and signed himself with the cross, saying, 'God be my witness
that I had rather die myself than injure my brother Bjorn; let all the blame
rest on King Harald.'
"Then Hemingr flung his spear. The spear went straight to
the mark, and passed between the nut and the crown of the lad, who was not in
the least injured. It flew farther, and stopped not till it fell.
"Then the king came up and asked Oddr what he thought about
the shot."
Years after, this risk was revenged upon the hard-hearted monarch. In the
battle of Stamfordbridge an arrow from a skilled archer penetrated the
windpipe of the king, and it is supposed to have sped, observes the Saga
writer, from the bow of Hemingr, then in the service of the English
monarch.
The story is related somewhat differently in the Faroe Isles, and is told
of Geyti, Aslak's son. The same Harald asks his men if they know who is his
match in strength. "Yes," they reply;﹃there is a peasant's son in the
uplands, Geyti, son of Aslak, who is the strongest of men.﹄Forth goes the
king, and at last rides up to the house of Aslak. "And where is your youngest
son?"
"Alas! alas! he lies under the green sod of Kolrin kirkgarth."
"Come, then, and show me his corpse, old man, that I may judge whether he
was as stout of limb as men say."
The father puts the king off with the excuse that among so many dead it
would be hard to find his boy. So the king rides away over the heath. He
meets a stately man returning from the chase, with a bow over his shoulder.
"And who art thou, friend?" "Geyti, Aslak's son." The dead man, in short,
alive and well. The king tells him he has heard of his prowess, and is come
to match his strength with him. So Geyti and the king try a
swimming-match.
The king swims well; but Geyti swims better, and in the end gives the
monarch such a ducking, that he is borne to his house devoid of sense and
motion. Harald swallows his anger, as he had swallowed the water, and bids
Geyti shoot a hazel nut from off his brother's head. Aslak's son consents,
and invites the king into the forest to witness his dexterity.
"On the string the shaft he laid,
And God hath heard his prayer;
He shot the little nut away,
Nor hurt the lad a hair."
Next day the king sends for the skilful bowman:—
"List thee, Geyti, Aslak's son,
And truly tell to me,
Wherefore hadst thou arrows twain
In the wood yestreen with thee?"
The bowman replies,—
"Therefore had I arrows twain
Yestreen in the wood with me,
Had I but hurt my brother dear,
The other had piercéd thee."
A very similar tale is told also in the celebrated Malleus Maleficarum of
a man named Puncher, with this difference, that a coin is placed on the lad's
head instead of an apple or a nut. The person who had dared Puncher to the
test of skill, inquires the use of the second arrow in his belt, and receives
the usual answer, that if the first arrow had missed the coin, the second
would have transfixed a certain heart which was destitute of natural
feeling.
We have, moreover, our English version of the same story in the venerable
ballad of William of Cloudsley.
The Finn ethnologist Castrén obtained the following tale in the Finnish
village of Uhtuwa:—
A fight took place between some freebooters and the inhabitants of the
village of Alajäwi. The robbers plundered every house, and carried off
amongst their captives an old man. As they proceeded with their spoils along
the strand of the lake, a lad of twelve years old appeared from among the
reeds on the opposite bank, armed with a bow, and amply provided with arrows;
he threatened to shoot down the captors unless the old man, his father, were
restored to him. The robbers mockingly replied that the aged man would be
given to him if he could shoot an apple off his head. The boy accepted the
challenge, and on successfully accomplishing it, the surrender of the
venerable captive was made.
Farid-Uddin Âttar was a Persian dealer in perfumes, born in the year 1119.
He one day was so impressed with the sight of a dervish, that he sold his
possessions, and followed righteousness. He composed the poem Mantic Uttaïr,
or the language of birds. Observe, the Persian Âttar lived at the same time
as the Danish Saxo, and long before the birth of Tell. Curiously enough, we
find a trace of the Tell myth in the pages of his poem. According to him,
however, the king shoots the apple from the head of a beloved page, and the
lad dies from sheer fright, though the arrow does not even graze his
skin.
The coincidence of finding so many versions of the same story scattered
through countries as remote as Persia and Iceland, Switzerland and Denmark,
proves, I think, that it can in no way be regarded as history, but is rather
one of the numerous household myths common to the whole stock of Aryan
nations. Probably, some one more acquainted with Sanskrit literature than
myself, and with better access to its unpublished stores of fable and legend,
will some day light on an early Indian tale corresponding to that so
prevalent among other branches of the same family. The coincidence of the
Tell myth being discovered among the Finns is attributable to Russian or
Swedish influence. I do not regard it as a primeval Turanian, but as an Aryan
story, which, like an erratic block, is found deposited on foreign soil far
from the mountain whence it was torn.
German mythologists, I suppose, consider the myth to represent the
manifestation of some natural phenomena, and the individuals of the story to
be impersonifications of natural forces. Most primeval stories were thus
constructed, and their origin is traceable enough. In Thorn-rose, for
instance, who can fail to see the earth goddess represented by the sleeping
beauty in her long winter slumber, only returning to life when kissed by the
golden-haired sun-god Phœbus or Baldur? But the Tell myth has not its
signification thus painted on the surface; and those who suppose Gessler or
Harald to be the power of evil and darkness,—the bold archer to be the
storm-cloud with his arrow of lightning and his iris bow, bent against the
sun, which is resting like a coin or a golden apple on the edge of the
horizon, are over-straining their theories, and exacting too much from our
credulity.
In these pages and elsewhere I have shown how some of the ancient myths
related by the whole Aryan family of nations are reducible to allegorical
explanations of certain well-known natural phenomena; but I must protest
against the manner in which our German friends fasten rapaciously upon every
atom of history, sacred and profane, and demonstrate all heroes to represent
the sun; all villains to be the demons of night or winter; all sticks and
spears and arrows to be the lightning; all cows and sheep and dragons and
swans to be clouds.
In a work on the superstition of Werewolves, I have entered into this
subject with some fulness, and am quite prepared to admit the premises upon
which mythologists construct their theories; at the same time I am not
disposed to run to the extravagant lengths reached by some of the most
enthusiastic German scholars. A wholesome warning to these gentlemen was
given some years ago by an ingenious French ecclesiastic, who wrote the
following argument to prove that Napoleon Bonaparte was a mythological
character. Archbishop Whately's "Historic Doubts" was grounded on a totally
different line of argument; I subjoin the other, as a curiosity and as a
caution.
Napoleon is, says the writer, an impersonification of the sun.
1. Between the name Napoleon and Apollo, or Apoleon, the god
of the sun, there is but a trifling difference; indeed, the seeming
difference is lessened, if we take the spelling of his name from the column
of the Place Vendôme, where it stands Néapoleó. But this syllable Ne
prefixed to the name of the sun-god is of importance; like the rest of the
name it is of Greek origin, and is "νη" or "ναι", a
particle of affirmation, as though indicating Napoleon as the very true
Apollo, or sun.
His other name, Bonaparte, makes this apparent connection
between the French hero and the luminary of the firmament conclusively
certain. The day has its two parts, the good and luminous portion, and that
which is bad and dark. To the sun belongs the good part, to the moon and
stars belongs the bad portion. It is therefore natural that Apollo or
Né-Apoleón should receive the surname of Bonaparte.
2. Apollo was born in Delos, a Mediterranean island;
Napoleon in Corsica, an island in the same sea. According to Pausanias,
Apollo was an Egyptian deity; and in the mythological history of the fabulous
Napoleon we find the hero in Egypt, regarded by the inhabitants with
veneration, and receiving their homage.
3. The mother of Napoleon was said to be Letitia, which
signifies joy, and is an impersonification of the dawn of light dispensing
joy and gladness to all creation. Letitia is no other than the break of day,
which in a manner brings the sun into the world, and﹃with rosy fingers opes
the gates of Day.﹄It is significant that the Greek name for the mother of
Apollo was Leto. From this the Romans made the name Latona, which they gave
to his mother. But Læto is the unused form of the verb lætor,
and signified to inspire joy; it is from this unused form that the
substantive Letitia is derived. The identity, then, of the mother of
Napoleon with the Greek Leto and the Latin Latona, is established
conclusively.
4. According to the popular story, this son of Letitia had
three sisters; and was it not the same with the Greek deity, who had the
three Graces?
5. The modern Gallic Apollo had four brothers. It is
impossible not to discern here the anthropomorphosis of the four seasons.
But, it will be objected, the seasons should be females. Here the French
language interposes; for in French the seasons are masculine, with the
exception of autumn, upon the gender of which grammarians are undecided,
whilst Autumnus in Latin is not more feminine than the other seasons. This
difficulty is therefore trifling, and what follows removes all shadow of
doubt.
Of the four brothers of Napoleon, three are said to have been kings, and
these of course are, Spring reigning over the flowers, Summer reigning over
the harvest, Autumn holding sway over the fruits. And as these three seasons
owe all to the powerful influence of the Sun, we are told in the popular myth
that the three brothers of Napoleon drew their authority from him, and
received from him their kingdoms. But if it be added that, of the four
brothers of Napoleon, one was not a king, that was because he is the
impersonification of Winter, which has no reign over anything. If, however,
it be asserted, in contradiction, that the winter has an empire, he will be
given the principality over snows and frosts, which, in the dreary season of
the year, whiten the face of the earth. Well, the fourth brother of Napoleon
is thus invested by popular tradition, commonly called history, with a vain
principality accorded to him in the decline of the power of Napoleon.
The principality was that of Canino, a name derived from cani, or the
whitened hairs of a frozen old age,—true emblem of winter. To the eyes
of poets, the forests covering the hills are their hair, and when winter
frosts them, they represent the snowy locks of a decrepit nature in the old
age of the year:—
"Cum gelidus crescit canis in montibus humor."
Consequently the Prince of Canino is an impersonification of
winter;—winter whose reign begins when the kingdoms of the three fine
seasons are passed from them, and when the sun is driven from his power by
the children of the North, as the poets call the boreal winds. This is the
origin of the fabulous invasion of France by the allied armies of the North.
The story relates that these invaders—the northern gales—banished
the many-colored flag, and replaced it by a white standard. This too is a
graceful, but, at the same time, purely fabulous account of the Northern
winds driving all the brilliant colors from the face of the soil, to replace
them by the snowy sheet.
6. Napoleon is said to have had two wives. It is well known that the
classic fable gave two also to Apollo. These two were the moon and the earth.
Plutarch asserts that the Greeks gave the moon to Apollo for wife, whilst the
Egyptians attributed to him the earth. By the moon he had no posterity, but
by the other he had one son only, the little Horus. This is an Egyptian
allegory, representing the fruits of agriculture produced by the earth
fertilized by the Sun. The pretended son of the fabulous Napoleon is said to
have been born on the 20th of March, the season of the spring equinox, when
agriculture is assuming its greatest period of activity.
7. Napoleon is said to have released France from the devastating scourge
which terrorized over the country, the hydra of the revolution, as it was
popularly called. Who cannot see in this a Gallic version of the Greek legend
of Apollo releasing Hellas from the terrible Python? The very name
revolution, derived from the Latin verb revolvo, is indicative
of the coils of a serpent like the Python.
8. The famous hero of the 19th century had, it is asserted, twelve
Marshals at the head of his armies, and four who were stationary and
inactive. The twelve first, as may be seen at once, are the signs of the
zodiac, marching under the orders of the sun Napoleon, and each commanding a
division of the innumerable host of stars, which are parted into twelve
portions, corresponding to the twelve signs. As for the four stationary
officers, immovable in the midst of general motion, they are the cardinal
points.
9. It is currently reported that the chief of these brilliant armies,
after having gloriously traversed the Southern kingdoms, penetrated North,
and was there unable to maintain his sway. This too represents the course of
the Sun, which assumes its greatest power in the South, but after the spring
equinox seeks to reach the North; and after a three months' march
towards the boreal regions, is driven back upon his traces following the sign
of Cancer, a sign given to represent the retrogression of the sun in that
portion of the sphere. It is on this that the story of the march of Napoleon
towards Moscow, and his humbling retreat, is founded.
10. Finally, the sun rises in the East and sets in the Western sea. The
poets picture him rising out of the waters in the East, and setting in the
ocean after his twelve hours' reign in the sky. Such is the history of
Napoleon, coming from his Mediterranean isle, holding the reins of government
for twelve years, and finally disappearing in the mysterious regions of the
great Atlantic.
To those who see in Samson, the image of the sun, the correlative of the
classic Hercules, this clever skit of the accomplished French Abbé may prove
of value as a caution.
VI. THE DOG GELLERT
HAVING demolished William Tell, I proceed to the destruction
of another article of popular belief.
Who that has visited Snowdon has not seen the grave of Llewellyn's
faithful hound Gellert, and been told by the guide the touching story of the
death of the noble animal? How can we doubt the facts, seeing that the place,
Beth-Gellert, is named after the dog, and that the grave is still visible?
But unfortunately for the truth of the legend, its pedigree can be traced
with the utmost precision.
The story is as follows:—
The Welsh Prince Llewellyn had a noble deerhound, Gellert, whom he trusted
to watch the cradle of his baby son whilst he himself was absent.
One day, on his return, to his intense horror, he beheld the cradle empty
and upset, the clothes dabbled with blood, and Gellert's mouth dripping with
gore. Concluding hastily that the hound had proved unfaithful, had fallen on
the child and devoured it,—in a paroxysm of rage the prince drew his
sword and slew the dog. Next instant the cry of the babe from behind the
cradle showed him that the child was uninjured; and, on looking farther,
Llewellyn discovered the body of a huge wolf, which had entered the house to
seize and devour the child, but which had been kept off and killed by the
brave dog Gellert.
In his self-reproach and grief, the prince erected a stately monument to
Gellert, and called the place where he was buried after the poor hound's
name.
Now, I find in Russia precisely the same story told, with just the same
appearance of truth, of a Czar Piras. In Germany it appears with considerable
variations. A man determines on slaying his old dog Sultan, and consults with
his wife how this is to be effected. Sultan overhears the conversation, and
complains bitterly to the wolf, who suggests an ingenious plan by which the
master may be induced to spare his dog. Next day, when the man is going to
his work, the wolf undertakes to carry off the child from its cradle. Sultan
is to attack him and rescue the infant. The plan succeeds admirably, and the
dog spends his remaining years in comfort. (Grimm, K. M. 48.)
But there is a story in closer conformity to that of Gellert among the
French collections of fabliaux made by Le Grand d'Aussy and Edéléstand du
Méril. It became popular through the "Gesta Romanorum," a collection of tales
made by the monks for harmless reading, in the fourteenth century.
In the "Gesta" the tale is told as follows:—
"Folliculus, a knight, was fond of hunting and tournaments.
He had an only son, for whom three nurses were provided. Next to this child,
he loved his falcon and his greyhound. It happened one day that he was called
to a tournament, whither his wife and domestics went also, leaving the child
in the cradle, the greyhound lying by him, and the falcon on his perch. A
serpent that inhabited a hole near the castle, taking advantage of the
profound silence that reigned, crept from his habitation, and advanced
towards the cradle to devour the child. The falcon, perceiving the danger,
fluttered with his wings till he awoke the dog, who instantly attacked the
invader, and after a fierce conflict, in which he was sorely wounded, killed
him. He then lay down on the ground to lick and heal his wounds. When the
nurses returned, they found the cradle overturned, the child thrown out, and
the ground covered with blood, as was also the dog, who they immediately
concluded had killed the child.
"Terrified at the idea of meeting the anger of the parents,
they determined to escape; but in their flight fell in with their mistress,
to whom they were compelled to relate the supposed murder of the child by the
greyhound. The knight soon arrived to hear the sad story, and, maddened with
fury, rushed forward to the spot. The poor wounded and faithful animal made
an effort to rise and welcome his master with his accustomed fondness; but
the enraged knight received him on the point of his sword, and he fell
lifeless to the ground. On examination of the cradle, the infant was found
alive and unhurt, with the dead serpent lying by him. The knight now
perceived what had happened, lamented bitterly over his faithful dog, and
blamed himself for having too hastily depended on the words of his wife.
Abandoning the profession of arms, he broke his lance in pieces, and vowed a
pilgrimage to the Holy Land, where he spent the rest of his days in
peace."
The monkish hit at the wife is amusing, and might have been supposed to
have originated with those determined misogynists, as the gallant Welshmen
lay all the blame on the man. But the good compilers of the "Gesta" wrote
little of their own, except moral applications of the tales they relate, and
the story of Folliculus and his dog, like many others in their collection, is
drawn from a foreign source.
It occurs in the Seven Wise Masters, and in the "Calumnia Novercalis" as
well, so that it must have been popular throughout mediæval Europe. Now, the
tales of the Seven Wise Masters are translations from a Hebrew work, the
Kalilah and Dimnah of Rabbi Joel, composed about A. D. 1250, or from Simeon
Seth's Greek Kylile and Dimne, written in 1080. These Greek and Hebrew works
were derived from kindred sources. That of Rabbi Joel was a translation from
an Arabic version made by Nasr-Allah in the twelfth century, whilst Simeon
Seth's was a translation of the Persian Kalilah and Dimnah. But the Persian
Kalilah and Dimnah was not either an original work; it was in turn a
translation from the Sanskrit Pantschatantra, made about A. D. 540.
In this ancient Indian book the story runs as follows:—
A Brahmin named Devasaman had a wife, who gave birth to a son, and also to
an ichneumon. She loved both her children dearly, giving them alike the
breast, and anointing them alike with salves. But she feared the ichneumon
might not love his brother.
One day, having laid her boy in bed, she took up the water jar, and said
to her husband, "Hear me, master! I am going to the tank to fetch water.
Whilst I am absent, watch the boy, lest he gets injured by the ichneumon."
After she had left the house, the Brahmin went forth begging, leaving the
house empty. In crept a black snake, and attempted to bite the child; but the
ichneumon rushed at it, and tore it in pieces. Then, proud of its
achievement, it sallied forth, all bloody, to meet its mother. She, seeing
the creature stained with blood, concluded, with feminine precipitance, that
it had fallen on the baby and killed it, and she flung her water jar at it
and slew it. Only on her return home did she ascertain her mistake.
The same story is also told in the Hitopadesa (iv. 13), but the animal is
an otter, not an ichneumon. In the Arabic version a weasel takes the place of
the ichneumon.
The Buddhist missionaries carried the story into Mongolia, and in the
Mongolian Uligerun, which is a translation of the Tibetian Dsanghen, the
story reappears with the pole-cat as the brave and suffering defender of the
child.
Stanislaus Julien, the great Chinese scholar, has discovered the same tale
in the Chinese work entitled﹃The Forest of Pearls from the Garden of the
Law.﹄This work dates from 668; and in it the creature is an ichneumon.
In the Persian Sindibad-nâmeh is the same tale, but the faithful animal is
a cat. In Sandabar and Syntipas it has become a dog. Through the influence of
Sandabar on the Hebrew translation of the Kalilah and Dimnah, the ichneumon
is also replaced by a dog.
Such is the history of the Gellert legend; it is an introduction into
Europe from India, every step of its transmission being clearly demonstrable.
From the Gesta Romanorum it passed into a popular tale throughout Europe, and
in different countries it was, like the Tell myth, localized and
individualized. Many a Welsh story, such as those contained in the
Mabinogion, are as easily traced to an Eastern origin.
But every story has its root. The root of the Gellert tale is this: A man
forms an alliance of friendship with a beast or bird. The dumb animal renders
him a signal service. He misunderstands the act, and kills his preserver.
We have tracked this myth under the Gellert form from India to Wales; but
under another form it is the property of the whole Aryan family, and forms a
portion of the traditional lore of all nations sprung from that stock.
Thence arose the classic fable of the peasant, who, as he slept, was
bitten by a fly. He awoke, and in a rage killed the insect. When too late, he
observed that the little creature had aroused him that he might avoid a snake
which lay coiled up near his pillow.
In the Anvar-i-Suhaili is the following kindred tale. A king had a falcon.
One day, whilst hunting, he filled a goblet with water dropping from a rock.
As he put the vessel to his lips, his falcon dashed upon it, and upset it
with its wings. The king, in a fury, slew the bird, and then discovered that
the water dripped from the jaws of a serpent of the most poisonous
description.
This story, with some variations, occurs in Æsop, Ælian, and Apthonius. In
the Greek fable, a peasant liberates an eagle from the clutches of a dragon.
The dragon spirts poison into the water which the peasant is about to drink,
without observing what the monster had done. The grateful eagle upsets the
goblet with his wings.
The story appears in Egypt under a whimsical form. A Wali once smashed a
pot full of herbs which a cook had prepared. The exasperated cook thrashed
the well-intentioned but unfortunate Wali within an inch of his life, and
when he returned, exhausted with his efforts at belaboring the man, to
examine the broken pot, he discovered amongst the herbs a poisonous
snake.
How many brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, and cousins of all degrees a
little story has! And how few of the tales we listen to can lay any claim to
originality! There is scarcely a story which I hear which I cannot connect
with some family of myths, and whose pedigree I cannot ascertain with more or
less precision. Shakespeare drew the plots of his plays from Boccaccio or
Straparola; but these Italians did not invent the tales they lent to the
English dramatist. King Lear does not originate with Geofry of Monmouth, but
comes from early Indian stores of fable, whence also are derived the Merchant
of Venice and the pound of flesh, ay, and the very incident of the three
caskets.
But who would credit it, were it not proved by conclusive facts, that
Johnny Sands is the inheritance of the whole Aryan family of nations, and
that Peeping Tom of Coventry peeped in India and on the Tartar steppes ages
before Lady Godiva was born?
If you listen to Traviata at the opera, you have set before you a tale
which has lasted for centuries, and which was perhaps born in India.
If you read in classic fable of Orpheus charming woods and meadows, beasts
and birds, with his magic lyre, you remember to have seen the same fable
related in the Kalewala of the Finnish Wainomainen, and in the Kaleopoeg of
the Esthonian Kalewa.
If you take up English history, and read of William the Conqueror slipping
as he landed on British soil, and kissing the earth, saying he had come to
greet and claim his own, you remember that the same story is told of Napoleon
in Egypt, of King Olaf Harold's son in Norway, and in classic history of
Junius Brutus on his return from the oracle.
A little while ago I cut out of a Sussex newspaper a story purporting to
be the relation of a fact which had taken place at a fixed date in Lewes.
This was the story. A tyrannical husband locked the door against his wife,
who was out having tea with a neighbor, gossiping and scandal-mongering; when
she applied for admittance, he pretended not to know her. She threatened to
jump into the well unless he opened the door.
The man, not supposing that she would carry her threat into execution,
declined, alleging that he was in bed, and the night was chilly; besides
which he entirely disclaimed all acquaintance with the lady who claimed
admittance.
The wife then flung a log into a well, and secreted herself behind the
door. The man, hearing the splash, fancied that his good lady was really in
the deeps, and forth he darted in his nocturnal costume, which was of the
lightest, to ascertain whether his deliverance was complete. At once the lady
darted into the house, locked the door, and, on the husband pleading for
admittance, she declared most solemnly from the window that she did not know
him.
Now, this story, I can positively assert, unless the events of this world
move in a circle, did not happen in Lewes, or any other Sussex town.
It was told in the Gesta Romanorum six hundred years ago, and it was told,
may be, as many hundred years before in India, for it is still to be found in
Sanskrit collections of tales.
VII. — TAILED MEN
I WELL remember having it impressed upon me by a Devonshire
nurse, as a little child, that all Cornishmen were born with tails; and it
was long before I could overcome the prejudice thus early implanted in my
breast against my Cornubian neighbors. I looked upon those who dwelt across
the Tamar as "uncanny," as being scarcely to be classed with Christian
people, and certainly not to be freely associated with by tailless Devonians.
I think my eyes were first opened to the fact that I had been deceived by a
worthy bookseller of L——, with whom I had contracted a warm
friendship, he having at sundry times contributed pictures to my scrapbook. I
remember one day resolving to broach the delicate subject with my tailed
friend, whom I liked, notwithstanding his caudal appendage.
"Mr. X——, is it true that you are a Cornishman?"
"Yes, my little man; born and bred in the West country."
"I like you very much; but—have you really got a tail?"
When the bookseller had recovered from the astonishment which I had
produced by my question, he stoutly repudiated the charge.
"But you are a Cornishman?"
"To be sure I am."
"And all Cornishmen have tails."
I believe I satisfied my own mind that the good man had sat his off, and
my nurse assured me that such was the case with those of sedentary
habits.
It is curious that Devonshire superstition should attribute the tail to
Cornishmen, for it was asserted of certain men of Kent in olden times, and
was referred to Divine vengeance upon them for having insulted St. Thomas à
Becket, if we may believe Polydore Vergil. "There were some," he says, "to
whom it seemed that the king's secret wish was, that Thomas should be got rid
of. He, indeed, as one accounted to be an enemy of the king's person, was
already regarded with so little respect, nay, was treated with so much
contempt, that when he came to Strood, which village is situated on the
Medway, the river that washes Rochester, the inhabitants of the place, being
eager to show some mark of contumely to the prelate in his disgrace, did not
scruple to cut off the tail of the horse on which he was riding; but by this
profane and inhospitable act they covered themselves with eternal reproach;
for it so happened after this, by the will of God, that all the offspring
born from the men who had done this thing, were born with tails, like brute
animals. But this mark of infamy, which formerly was everywhere notorious,
has disappeared with the extinction of the race whose fathers perpetrated
this deed."
John Bale, the zealous reformer, and Bishop of Ossory in Edward VI.'s
time, refers to this story, and also mentions a variation of the scene and
cause of this ignoble punishment. He writes, quoting his authorities,﹃John
Capgrave and Alexander of Esseby sayth, that for castynge of fyshe tayles at
thys Augustyne, Dorsettshyre men had tayles ever after. But Polydorus
applieth it unto Kentish men at Stroud, by Rochester, for cuttinge off Thomas
Becket's horse's tail. Thus hath England in all other land a perpetual infamy
of tayles by theye wrytten legendes of lyes, yet can they not well tell where
to bestowe them truely.﹄Bale, a fierce and unsparing reformer, and one who
stinted not hard words, applying to the inventors of these legends an epithet
more strong than elegant, says, "In the legends of their sanctified sorcerers
they have diffamed the English posterity with tails, as has been showed
afore. That an Englyshman now cannot travayle in another land by way of
marchandyse or any other honest occupyinge, but it is most contumeliously
thrown in his tethe that all Englyshmen have tails. That uncomely note and
report have the nation gotten, without recover, by these laisy and idle
lubbers, the monkes and the priestes, which could find no matters to advance
their canonized gains by, or their saintes, as they call them, but manifest
lies and knaveries."[27]
[27] "Actes of English Votaries."
Andrew Marvel also makes mention of this strange judgment in his Loyal
Scot:—
"But who considers right will find, indeed,
'Tis Holy Island parts us, not the Tweed.
Nothing but clergy could us two seclude,
No Scotch was ever like a bishop's feud.
All Litanys in this have wanted faith,
There's no—Deliver us from a Bishop's wrath.
Never shall Calvin pardoned be for sales,
Never, for Burnet's sake, the Lauderdales;
For Becket's sake, Kent always shall have tails."
It may be remembered that Lord Monboddo, a Scotch judge of last century,
and a philosopher of some repute, though of great eccentricity, stoutly
maintained the theory that man ought to have a tail, that the tail is a
desideratum, and that the abrupt termination of the spine without
caudal elongation is a sad blemish in the origination of man. The tail, the
point in which man is inferior to the brute, what a delicate index of the
mind it is! how it expresses the passions of love and hate! how nicely it
gives token of the feelings of joy or fear which animate the soul! But Lord
Monboddo did not consider that what the tail is to the brute, that the eye is
to man; the lack of one member is supplied by the other. I can tell a proud
man by his eye just as truly as if he stalked past one with erect tail; and
anger is as plainly depicted in the human eye as in the bottle-brush tail of
a cat. I know a sneak by his cowering glance, though he has not a tail
between his legs; and pleasure is evident in the laughing eye, without there
being any necessity for a wagging brush to express it.
Dr. Johnson paid a visit to the judge, and knocked on the head his theory
that men ought to have tails, and actually were born with them occasionally;
for said he,﹃Of a standing fact, sir, there ought to be no controversy; if
there are men with tails, catch a homo caudatus.﹄And,﹃It is a pity
to see Lord Monboddo publish such notions as he has done—a man of
sense, and of so much elegant learning. There would be little in a fool doing
it; we should only laugh; but, when a wise man does it, we are sorry. Other
people have strange notions, but they conceal them. If they have tails they
hide them; but Monboddo is as jealous of his tail as a squirrel.﹄And yet
Johnson seems to have been tickled with the idea, and to have been amused
with the notion of an appendage like a tail being regarded as the complement
of human perfection. It may be remembered how Johnson made the acquaintance
of the young Laird of Col, during his Highland tour, and how pleased he was
with him. "Col," says he,﹃is a noble animal. He is as complete an islander
as the mind can figure. He is a farmer, a sailor, a hunter, a fisher: he will
run you down a dog; if any man has a tail, it is Col.﹄And
notwithstanding all his aversion to puns, the great Doctor was fain to yield
to human weakness on one occasion, under the influence of the mirth which
Monboddo's name seems to have excited. Johnson writes to Mrs. Thrale of a
party he had met one night, which he thus enumerates: "There were Smelt, and
the Bishop of St. Asaph, who comes to every place; and Sir Joshua, and Lord
Monboddo, and ladies out of tale."
There is a Polish story of a witch who made a girdle of human skin and
laid it across the threshold of a door where a marriage-feast was being held.
On the bridal pair stepping across the girdle they were transformed into
wolves. Three years after the witch sought them out, and cast over them
dresses of fur with the hair turned outward, whereupon they recovered their
human forms, but, unfortunately, the dress cast over the bridegroom was too
scanty, and did not extend over his tail, so that, when he was restored to
his former condition, he retained his lupine caudal appendage, and this
became hereditary in his family; so that all Poles with tails are lineal
descendants of the ancestor to whom this little misfortune happened. John
Struys, a Dutch traveller, who visited the Isle of Formosa in 1677, gives a
curious story, which is worth transcribing.
"Before I visited this island," he writes, "I had often
heard tell that there were men who had long tails, like brute beasts; but I
had never been able to believe it, and I regarded it as a thing so alien to
our nature, that I should now have difficulty in accepting it, if my own
senses had not removed from me every pretence for doubting the fact, by the
following strange adventure: The inhabitants of Formosa, being used to see
us, were in the habit of receiving us on terms which left nothing to
apprehend on either side; so that, although mere foreigners, we always
believed ourselves in safety, and had grown familiar enough to ramble at
large without an escort, when grave experience taught us that, in so doing,
we were hazarding too much. As some of our party were one day taking a
stroll, one of them had occasion to withdraw about a stone's throw from the
rest, who, being at the moment engaged in an eager conversation, proceeded
without heeding the disappearance of their companion. After a while, however,
his absence was observed, and the party paused, thinking he would rejoin
them. They waited some time; but at last, tired of the delay, they returned
in the direction of the spot where they remembered to have seen him last.
Arriving there, they were horrified to find his mangled body lying on the
ground, though the nature of the lacerations showed that he had not had to
suffer long ere death released him. Whilst some remained to watch the dead
body, others went off in search of the murderer; and these had not gone far,
when they came upon a man of peculiar appearance, who, finding himself
enclosed by the exploring party, so as to make escape from them impossible,
began to foam with rage, and by cries and wild gesticulations to intimate
that he would make any one repent the attempt who should venture to meddle
with him. The fierceness of his desperation for a time kept our people at
bay; but as his fury gradually subsided, they gathered more closely round
him, and at length seized him. He then soon made them understand that it was
he who had killed their comrade, but they could not learn from him any cause
for this conduct. As the crime was so atrocious, and, if allowed to pass with
impunity, might entail even more serious consequences, it was determined to
burn the man. He was tied up to a stake, where he was kept for some hours
before the time of execution arrived. It was then that I beheld what I had
never thought to see. He had a tail more than a foot long, covered with red
hair, and very like that of a cow. When he saw the surprise that this
discovery created among the European spectators, he informed us that his tail
was the effect of climate, for that all the inhabitants of the southern side
of the island, where they then were, were provided with like
appendages."[28]
[28] "Voyages de Jean Struys," An. 1650.
After Struys, Hornemann reported that, between the Gulf of Benin and
Abyssinia, were tailed anthropophagi, named by the natives Niam-niams;
and in 1849, M. Descouret, on his return from Mecca, affirmed that such was a
common report, and added that they had long arms, low and narrow foreheads,
long and erect ears, and slim legs.
Mr. Harrison, in his "Highlands of Ethiopia," alludes to the common belief
among the Abyssinians, in a pygmy race of this nature.
MM. Arnault and Vayssière, travellers in the same country, in 1850,
brought the subject before the Academy of Sciences.
In 1851, M. de Castelnau gave additional details relative to an expedition
against these tailed men. "The Niam-niams," he says, "were sleeping in the
sun: the Haoussas approached, and, falling on them, massacred them to the
last man. They had all of them tails forty centimetres long, and from two to
three in diameter. This organ is smooth. Among the corpses were those of
several women, who were deformed in the same manner. In all other
particulars, the men were precisely like all other negroes. They are of a
deep black, their teeth are polished, their bodies not tattooed. They are
armed with clubs and javelins; in war they utter piercing cries. They
cultivate rice, maize, and other grain. They are fine looking men, and their
hair is not frizzled."
M. d'Abbadie, another Abyssinian traveller, writing in 1852, gives the
following account from the lips of an Abyssinian priest: "At the distance of
fifteen days' journey south of Herrar is a place where all the men have
tails, the length of a palm, covered with hair, and situated at the extremity
of the spine. The females of that country are very beautiful and are
tailless. I have seen some fifteen of these people at Besberah, and I am
positive that the tail is natural."
It will be observed that there is a discrepancy between the accounts of M.
de Castelnau and M. d'Abbadie. The former accords tails to the ladies, whilst
the latter denies it. According to the former, the tail is smooth; according
to the latter, it is covered with hair.
Dr. Wolf has improved on this in his "Travels and Adventures," vol. ii.
1861. "There are men and women in Abyssinia with tails like dogs and horses."
Wolf heard also from a great many Abyssinians and Armenians (and Wolf is
convinced of the truth of it), that﹃there are near Narea, in Abyssinia,
people—men and women—with large tails, with which they are able
to knock down a horse; and there are also such people near China.﹄And in a
note, "In the College of Surgeons at Dublin may still be seen a human
skeleton, with a tail seven inches long! There are many known instances of
this elongation of the caudal vertebra, as in the Poonangs in Borneo."
But the most interesting and circumstantial account of the Niam-niams is
that given by Dr. Hubsch, physician to the hospitals of Constantinople.﹃It
was in 1852,﹄says he, "that I saw for the first time a tailed negress. I was
struck with this phenomenon, and I questioned her master, a slave dealer. I
learned from him that there exists a tribe called Niam-niam, occupying the
interior of Africa. All the members of this tribe bear the caudal appendage,
and, as Oriental imagination is given to exaggeration, I was assured that the
tails sometimes attained the length of two feet. That which I observed was
smooth and hairless. It was about two inches long, and terminated in a point.
This woman was as black as ebony, her hair was frizzled, her teeth white,
large, and planted in sockets which inclined considerably outward; her four
canine teeth were filed, her eyes bloodshot. She ate meat raw, her clothes
fidgeted her, her intellect was on a par with that of others of her
condition.
"Her master had been unable, during six months, to sell her,
notwithstanding the low figure at which he would have disposed of her; the
abhorrence with which she was regarded was not attributed to her tail, but to
the partiality, which she was unable to conceal, for human flesh. Her tribe
fed on the flesh of the prisoners taken from the neighboring tribes, with
whom they were constantly at war.
"As soon as one of the tribe dies, his relations, instead of
burying him, cut him up and regale themselves upon his remains; consequently
there are no cemeteries in this land. They do not all of them lead a
wandering life, but many of them construct hovels of the branches of trees.
They make for themselves weapons of war and of agriculture; they cultivate
maize and wheat, and keep cattle. The Niam-niams have a language of their
own, of an entirely primitive character, though containing an infusion of
Arabic words.
"They live in a state of complete nudity, and seek only to
satisfy their brute appetites. There is among them an utter disregard for
morality, incest and adultery being common. The strongest among them becomes
the chief of the tribe; and it is he who apportions the shares of the booty
obtained in war. It is hard to say whether they have any religion; but in all
probability they have none, as they readily adopt any one which they are
taught.
"It is difficult to tame them altogether; their instinct
impelling them constantly to seek for human flesh; and instances are related
of slaves who have massacred and eaten the children confided to their
charge.
"I have seen a man of the same race, who had a tail an inch
and a half long, covered with a few hairs. He appeared to be thirty-five
years old; he was robust, well built, of an ebon blackness, and had the same
peculiar formation of jaw noticed above; that is to say, the tooth sockets
were inclined outwards. Their four canine teeth are filed down, to diminish
their power of mastication.
"I know also, at Constantinople, the son of a physician,
aged two years, who was born with a tail an inch long; he belonged to the
white Caucasian race. One of his grandfathers possessed the same appendage.
This phenomenon is regarded generally in the East as a sign of great brute
force."
About ten years ago, a newspaper paragraph recorded the birth of a boy at
Newcastle-on-Tyne, provided with a tail about an inch and a quarter long. It
was asserted that the child when sucking wagged this stump as token of
pleasure.
Yet, notwithstanding all this testimony in favor of tailed men and women,
it is simply a matter of impossibility for a human being to have a tail, for
the spinal vertebræ in man do not admit of elongation, as in many animals;
for the spine terminates in the os sacrum, a large and expanded bone of
peculiar character, entirely precluding all possibility of production to the
spine as in caudate animals.
VIII. — ANTICHRIST AND POPE JOAN
FROM the earliest ages of the Church, the advent of the Man
of Sin has been looked forward to with terror, and the passages of Scripture
relating to him have been studied with solemn awe, lest that day of wrath
should come upon the Church unawares. As events in the world's history took
place which seemed to be indications of the approach of Antichrist, a great
horror fell upon men's minds, and their imaginations conjured up myths which
flew from mouth to mouth, and which were implicitly believed.
Before speaking of these strange tales which produced such an effect on
the minds of men in the middle ages, it will be well briefly to examine the
opinions of divines of the early ages on the passages of Scripture connected
with the coming of the last great persecutor of the Church. Antichrist was
believed by most ancient writers to be destined to arise out of the tribe of
Dan, a belief founded on the prediction of Jacob,﹃Dan shall be a serpent by
the way, an adder in the path﹄(conf. Jeremiah viii. 16), and on the
exclamation of the dying patriarch, when looking on his son Dan,﹃I have
waited for Thy Salvation, O Lord,﹄as though the long-suffering of God had
borne long with that tribe, but in vain, and it was to be extinguished
without hope. This, indeed, is implied in the sealing of the servants of God
in their foreheads (Revelation vii.), when twelve thousand out of every
tribe, except Dan, were seen by St. John to receive the seal of adoption,
whilst of the tribe of Dan not one was sealed, as though it, to a man,
had apostatized.
Opinions as to the nature of Antichrist were divided. Some held that he
was to be a devil in phantom body, and of this number was Hippolytus. Others,
again, believed that he would be an incarnate demon, true man and true devil;
in fearful and diabolical parody of the Incarnation of our Lord. A third view
was, that he would be merely a desperately wicked man, acting upon diabolical
inspirations, just as the saints act upon divine inspirations. St. John
Damascene expressly asserts that he will not be an incarnate demon, but a
devilish man; for he says,﹃Not as Christ assumed humanity, so will the devil
become human, but the Man will receive all the inspiration of Satan, and will
suffer the devil to take up his abode within him.﹄In this manner Antichrist
could have many forerunners; and so St. Jerome and St. Augustine saw an
Antichrist in Nero, not the Antichrist, but one of those of whom the
Apostle speaks—"Even now are there many Antichrists." Thus also every
enemy of the faith, such as Diocletian, Julian, and Mahomet, has been
regarded as a precursor of the Arch-persecutor, who was expected to sum up in
himself the cruelty of a Nero or Diocletian, the show of virtue of a Julian,
and the spiritual pride of a Mahomet.
From infancy the evil one is to take possession of Antichrist, and to
train him for his office, instilling into him cunning, cruelty, and pride.
His doctrine will be—not downright infidelity, but a﹃show of
godliness,﹄whilst "denying the power thereof;" i. e., the miraculous origin
and divine authority of Christianity. He will sow doubts of our Lord's
manifestation "in the flesh," he will allow Christ to be an excellent Man,
capable of teaching the most exalted truths, and inculcating the purest
morality, yet Himself fallible and carried away by fanaticism.
In the end, however, Antichrist will﹃exalt himself to sit as God in the
temple of God,﹄and become﹃the abomination of desolation standing in the
holy place.﹄At the same time there is to be an awful alliance struck between
himself, the impersonification of the world-power and the Church of God; some
high pontiff of which, or the episcopacy in general, will enter into league
with the unbelieving state to oppress the very elect. It is a strange
instance of religionary virulence which makes some detect the Pope of Rome in
the Man of Sin, the Harlot, the Beast, and the Priest going before it. The
Man of Sin and the Beast are unmistakably identical, and refer to an
Antichristian world-power; whilst the Harlot and the Priest are symbols of an
apostasy in the Church. There is nothing Roman in this, but something very
much the opposite.
How the Abomination of Desolation can be considered as set up in a Church
where every sanctuary is adorned with all that can draw the heart to the
Crucified, and raise the thoughts to the imposing ritual of Heaven, is a
puzzle to me. To the man uninitiated in the law that Revelation is to be
interpreted by contraries, it would seem more like the Abomination of
Desolation in the Holy Place if he entered a Scotch Presbyterian, or a Dutch
Calvinist, place of worship. Rome does not fight against the Daily Sacrifice,
and endeavor to abolish it; that has been rather the labor of so-called
Church Reformers, who with the suppression of the doctrine of Eucharistic
Sacrifice and Sacramental Adoration have well nigh obliterated all notion of
worship to be addressed to the God-Man. Rome does not deny the power of the
godliness of which she makes show, but insists on that power with no broken
accents. It is rather in other communities, where authority is flung aside,
and any man is permitted to believe or reject what he likes, that we must
look for the leaven of the Antichristian spirit at work.
It is evident that this spirit will infect the Church, and especially
those in place of authority therein; so that the elect will have to wrestle
against both "principalities and powers" in the state, and also﹃spiritual
wickedness in the high places﹄of the Church. Perhaps it will be this feeling
of antagonism between the inferior orders and the highest which will throw
the Bishops into the arms of the state, and establish that unholy alliance
which will be cemented for the purpose of oppressing all who hold the truth
in sincerity, who are definite in their dogmatic statements of Christ's
having been manifested in the flesh, who labor to establish the Daily
Sacrifice, and offer in every place the pure offering spoken of by Malachi.
Perhaps it was in anticipation of this, that ancient mystical interpreters
explained the scene at the well in Midian as having reference to the last
times.
The Church, like the daughters of Reuel, comes to the Well of living
waters to water her parched flock; whereupon the shepherds—her chief
pastors—arise and strive with her.﹃Fear not, O flock, fear not, O
daughter!﹄exclaims the commentator;﹃thy true Moses is seated on the well,
and He will arise out of His resting-place, and will with His own hand smite
the shepherds, and water the flock.﹄Let the sheep be in barren and dry
pastures,—so long the shepherds strive not; let the sheep pant and
die,—so long the shepherds show no signs of irritation; but let the
Church approach the limpid well of life, and at once her prelates will, in
the latter days, combine "to strive" with her, and keep back the flock from
the reviving streams.
In the time of Antichrist the Church will be divided: one portion will
hold to the world-power, the other will seek out the old paths, and cling to
the only true Guide. The high places will be filled with unbelievers in the
Incarnation, and the Church will be in a condition of the utmost spiritual
degradation, but enjoying the highest State patronage. The religion in favor
will be one of morality, but not of dogma; and the Man of Sin will be able to
promulgate his doctrine, according to St. Anselm, through his great eloquence
and wisdom, his vast learning and mightiness in the Holy Scriptures, which he
will wrest to the overthrowing of dogma. He will be liberal in bribes, for he
will be of unbounded wealth; he will be capable of performing great﹃signs
and wonders,﹄so as "to deceive—the very elect;" and at the last, he
will tear the moral veil from his countenance, and a monster of impiety and
cruelty, he will inaugurate that awful persecution, which is to last for
three years and a half, and to excel in horror all the persecutions that have
gone before.
In that terrible season of confusion faith will be all but extinguished.
"When the Son of Man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth?" asks our
Blessed Lord, as though expecting the answer, No; and then, says Marchantius,
the vessel of the Church will disappear in the foam of that boiling deep of
infidelity, and be hidden in the blackness of that storm of destruction which
sweeps over the earth. The sun shall﹃be darkened, and the moon shall not
give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven;﹄the sun of faith shall
have gone out; the moon, the Church, shall not give her light, being turned
into blood, through stress of persecution; and the stars, the great
ecclesiastical dignitaries, shall fall into apostasy. But still the Church
will remain unwrecked, she will weather the storm; still will she come forth
"beautiful as the moon, terrible as an army with banners;" for after the
lapse of those three and a half years, Christ will descend to avenge the
blood of the saints, by destroying Antichrist and the world-power.
Such is a brief sketch of the scriptural doctrine of Antichrist as held by
the early and mediæval Church. Let us now see to what myths it gave rise
among the vulgar and the imaginative. Rabanus Maurus, in his work on the life
of Antichrist, gives a full account of the miracles he will perform; he tells
us that the Man-fiend will heal the sick, raise the dead, restore sight to
the blind, hearing to the deaf, speech to the dumb; he will raise storms and
calm them, will remove mountains, make trees flourish or wither at a word. He
will rebuild the temple at Jerusalem, and making the Holy City the great
capital of the world. Popular opinion added that his vast wealth would be
obtained from hidden treasures, which are now being concealed by the demons
for his use. Various possessed persons, when interrogated, announced that
such was the case, and that the amount of buried gold was vast.
"In the year 1599," says Canon Moreau, a contemporary
historian, "a rumor circulated with prodigious rapidity through Europe, that
Antichrist had been born at Babylon, and that already the Jews of that part
were hurrying to receive and recognize him as their Messiah. The news came
from Italy and Germany, and extended to Spain, England, and other Western
kingdoms, troubling many people, even the most discreet; however, the learned
gave it no credence, saying that the signs predicted in Scripture to precede
that event were not yet accomplished, and among other that the Roman empire
was not yet abolished.... Others said that, as for the signs, the majority
had already appeared to the best of their knowledge, and with regard to the
rest, they might have taken place in distant regions without their having
been made known to them; that the Roman empire existed but in name, and that
the interpretation of the passage on which its destruction was predicted,
might be incorrect; that for many centuries, the most learned and pious had
believed in the near approach of Antichrist, some believing that he had
already come, on account of the persecutions which had fallen on the
Christians; others, on account of fires, or eclipses, or earthquakes....
Every one was in excitement; some declared that the news must be correct,
others believed nothing about it, and the agitation became so excessive, that
Henry IV., who was then on the throne, was compelled by edict to forbid any
mention of the subject."
The report spoken of by Moreau gained additional confirmation from the
announcement made by an exorcised demoniac, that in 1600, the Man of Sin had
been born in the neighborhood of Paris, of a Jewess, named Blanchefleure, who
had conceived by Satan. The child had been baptized at the Sabbath of
Sorcerers; and a witch, under torture, acknowledged that she had rocked the
infant Antichrist on her knees, and she averred that he had claws on his
feet, wore no shoes, and spoke all languages.
In 1623 appeared the following startling announcement, which obtained an
immense circulation among the lower orders:
"We, brothers of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, in the
Isle of Malta, have received letters from our spies, who are engaged in our
service in the country of Babylon, now possessed by the Grand Turk; by the
which letters we are advertised, that, on the 1st of May, in the year of our
Lord 1623, a child was born in the town of Bourydot, otherwise called Calka,
near Babylon, of the which child the mother is a very aged woman, of race
unknown, called Fort-Juda: of the father nothing is known. The child is
dusky, has pleasant mouth and eyes, teeth pointed like those of a cat, ears
large, stature by no means exceeding that of other children; the said child,
incontinent on his birth, walked and talked perfectly well. His speech is
comprehended by every one, admonishing the people that he is the true
Messiah, and the son of God, and that in him all must believe. Our spies also
swear and protest that they have seen the said child with their own eyes; and
they add, that, on the occasion of his nativity, there appeared marvellous
signs in heaven, for at full noon the sun lost its brightness, and was for
some time obscured."
This is followed by a list of other signs appearing, the most remarkable
being a swarm of flying serpents, and a shower of precious stones.
According to Sebastian Michaeliz, in his history of the possessed of
Flanders, on the authority of the exorcised demons, we learn that Antichrist
is to be a son of Beelzebub, who will accompany his offspring under the form
of a bird, with four feet and a bull's head; that he will torture Christians
with the same tortures with which the lost souls are racked; that he will be
able to fly, speak all languages, and will have any number of names.
We find that Antichrist is known to the Mussulmans as well as to
Christians. Lane, in his edition of the "Arabian Nights," gives some curious
details on Moslem ideas regarding him. According to these, Antichrist will
overrun the earth, mounted on an ass, and followed by 40,000 Jews; his empire
will last forty days, whereof the first day will be a year long, the duration
of the second will be a month, that of the third a week, the others being of
their usual length. He will devastate the whole world, leaving Mecca and
Medina alone in security, as these holy cities will be guarded by angelic
legions. Christ at last will descend to earth, and in a great battle will
destroy the Man-devil.
Several writers, of different denominations, no less superstitious than
the common people, connected the apparition of Antichrist with the fable of
Pope Joan, which obtained such general credence at one time, but which modern
criticism has at length succeeded in excluding from history.
Perhaps the earliest writer to mention Pope Joan is Marianus Scotus, who
in his chronicle inserts the following passage:﹃A. D. 854, Lotharii 14,
Joanna, a woman, succeeded Leo, and reigned two years, five months, and four
days.﹄Marianus Scotus died A. D. 1086. Sigebert de Gemblours (d. 5th Oct.,
1112) inserts the same story in his valuable chronicle, copying from an
interpolated passage in the work of Anastasius the librarian. His words are,
﹃It is reported that this John was a female, and that she conceived by one of
her servants. The Pope, becoming pregnant, gave birth to a child; wherefore
some do not number her among the Pontiffs.﹄Hence the story spread among the
mediæval chroniclers, who were great plagiarists. Otto of Frisingen and
Gotfrid of Viterbo mention the Lady-Pope in their histories, and Martin
Polonus gives details as follows:
"After Leo IV., John Anglus, a native of Metz, reigned two
years, five months, and four days. And the pontificate was vacant for a
month. He died in Rome. He is related to have been a female, and, when a
girl, to have accompanied her sweetheart in male costume to Athens; there she
advanced in various sciences, and none could be found to equal her. So, after
having studied for three years in Rome, she had great masters for her pupils
and hearers. And when there arose a high opinion in the city of her virtue
and knowledge, she was unanimously elected Pope. But during her papacy she
became in the family way by a familiar. Not knowing the time of birth, as she
was on her way from St. Peter's to the Lateran she had a painful delivery,
between the Coliseum and St. Clement's Church, in the street. Having died
after, it is said that she was buried on the spot; and therefore the Lord
Pope always turns aside from that way, and it is supposed by some out of
detestation for what happened there. Nor on that account is she placed in the
catalogue of the Holy Pontiffs, not only on account of her sex, but also
because of the horribleness of the circumstance."
Certainly a story at all scandalous crescit eundo.
William Ocham alludes to the story, and John Huss, only too happy to
believe it, provides the lady with a name, and asserts that she was baptized
Agnes, or, as he will have it with a strong aspirate, Hagnes. Others,
however, insist upon her name having been Gilberta; and some stout Germans,
not relishing the notion of her being a daughter of Fatherland, palm her off
on England. As soon as we arrive at Reformation times, the German and French
Protestants fasten on the story with the utmost avidity, and add sweet little
touches of their own, and draw conclusions galling enough to the Roman See,
illustrating their accounts with wood engravings vigorous and graphic, but
hardly decent. One of these represents the event in a peculiarly startling
manner. The procession of bishops, with the Host and tapers, is sweeping
along, when suddenly the cross-bearer before the triple-crowned and vested
Pope starts aside to witness the unexpected arrival. This engraving, which it
is quite impossible for me to reproduce, is in a curious little book,
entitled "Puerperium Johannis Papæ 8, 1530."
The following jingling record of the event is from the Rhythmical Vitæ
Pontificum of Gulielmus Jacobus of Egmonden, a work never printed. This
fragment is preserved in "Wolfii Lectionum Memorabilium centenarii,
XVI.:"—
"Priusquàm reconditur Sergius, vocatur
Ad summam, qui dicitur Johannes, huic addatur
Anglicus, Moguntia iste procreatur.
Qui, ut dat sententia, fœminis aptatur
Sexu: quod sequentia monstrant, breviatur,
Hæc vox: nam prolixius chronica procedunt.
Ista, de qua brevius dicta minus lædunt.
Huic erat amasius, ut scriptores credunt.
Patria relinquitur Moguntia, Græcorum
Studiosè petitur schola. Pòst doctorum
Hæc doctrix efficitur Romæ legens: horum
Hæc auditu fungitur loquens. Hinc prostrato
Summo hæc eligitur: sexu exaltato
Quandoque negligitur. Fatur quòd hæc nato
Per servum conficitur. Tempore gignendi
Ad processum equus scanditur, vice flendi,
Papa cadit, panditur improbis ridendi
Norma, puer nascitur in vico Clementis,
Colossœum jungitur. Corpus parentis
In eodem traditur sepulturæ gentis,
Faturque scriptoribus, quòd Papa præfato,
Vico senioribus transiens amato
Congruo ductoribus sequitur negato
Loco, quo Ecclesia partu denigratur,
Quamvis inter spacia Pontificum ponatur,
Propter sexum."
Stephen Blanch, in his﹃Urbis Romæ Mirabilia,﹄says that an angel of
heaven appeared to Joan before the event, and asked her to choose whether she
would prefer burning eternally in hell, or having her confinement in public;
with sense which does her credit, she chose the latter. The Protestant
writers were not satisfied that the father of the unhappy baby should have
been a servant: some made him a Cardinal, and others the devil himself.
According to an eminent Dutch minister, it is immaterial whether the child be
fathered on Satan or a monk; at all events, the former took a lively interest
in the youthful Antichrist, and, on the occasion of his birth, was seen and
heard fluttering overhead, crowing and chanting in an unmusical voice the
Sibylline verses announcing the birth of the Arch-persecutor:—
"Papa pater patrum, Papissæ pandito partum
Et tibi tunc eadem de corpore quando recedam!"
which lines, as being perhaps the only ones known to be of
diabolic composition, are deserving of preservation.
The Reformers, in order to reconcile dates, were put to the somewhat
perplexing necessity of moving Pope Joan to their own times, or else of
giving to the youthful Antichrist an age of seven hundred years.
It must be allowed that the accouchement of a Pope in full
pontificals, during a solemn procession, was a prodigy not likely to occur
more than once in the world's history, and was certain to be of momentous
import.
It will be seen by the curious woodcut reproduced as frontispiece from
Baptista Mantuanus, that he consigned Pope Joan to the jaws of hell,
notwithstanding her choice. The verses accompanying this picture
are:—
"Hic pendebat adhuc sexum mentita virile
Fœmina, cui triplici Phrygiam diademate mitram
Extollebat apex: et pontificalis adulter."
It need hardly be stated that the whole story of Pope Joan is fabulous,
and rests on not the slightest historical foundation. It was probably a Greek
invention to throw discredit on the papal hierarchy, first circulated more
than two hundred years after the date of the supposed Pope. Even Martin
Polonus (A. D. 1282), who is the first to give the details, does so merely on
popular report.
The great champions of the myth were the Protestants of the sixteenth
century, who were thoroughly unscrupulous in distorting history and
suppressing facts, so long as they could make a point. A paper war was waged
upon the subject, and finally the whole story was proved conclusively to be
utterly destitute of historical truth. A melancholy example of the blindness
of party feeling and prejudice is seen in Mosheim, who assumes the truth of
the ridiculous story, and gravely inserts it in his "Ecclesiastical History."
﹃Between Leo IV., who died 855, and Benedict III., a woman, who concealed her
sex and assumed the name of John, it is said, opened her way to the
Pontifical throne by her learning and genius, and governed the Church for a
time. She is commonly called the Papess Joan. During the five subsequent
centuries the witnesses to this extraordinary event are without number; nor
did any one, prior to the Reformation by Luther, regard the thing as either
incredible or disgraceful to the Church.﹄Such are Mosheim's words, and I
give them as a specimen of the credit which is due to his opinion. The
"Ecclesiastical History" he wrote is full of perversions of the plainest
facts, and that under our notice is but one out of many.﹃During the five
centuries after her reign,﹄he says,﹃the witnesses to the story are
innumerable.﹄Now, for two centuries there is not an allusion to be found to
the events. The only passage which can be found is a universally acknowledged
interpolation of the "Lives of the Popes," by Anastasius Bibliothecarius; and
this interpolation is stated in the first printed edition by Busæus, Mogunt.
1602, to be only found in two MS. copies.
From Marianus Scotus or Sigebert de Gemblours the story passed into other
chronicles totidem verbis, and generally with hesitation and an
expression of doubt in its accuracy. Martin Polonus is the first to give the
particulars, some four hundred and twenty years after the reign of the
fabulous Pope.
Mosheim is false again in asserting that no one prior to the Reformation
regarded the thing as either incredible or disgraceful. This is but of a
piece with his malignity and disregard for truth, whenever he can hit the
Catholic Church hard. Bart. Platina, in his "Lives of the Popes," written
before Luther was born, after relating the story, says,﹃These things which I
relate are popular reports, but derived from uncertain and obscure authors,
which I have therefore inserted briefly and baldly, lest I should seem to
omit obstinately and pertinaciously what most people assert.﹄Thus the facts
were justly doubted by Platina on the legitimate grounds that they rested on
popular gossip, and not on reliable history. Marianus Scotus, the first to
relate the story, died in 1086. He was a monk of St. Martin of Cologne, then
of Fulda, and lastly of St. Alban's, at Metz. How could he have obtained
reliable information, or seen documents upon which to ground the assertion?
Again, his chronicle has suffered severely from interpolations in numerous
places, and there is reason to believe that the Pope-Joan passage is itself a
late interpolation.
If so, we are reduced to Sigebert de Gemblours (d. 1112), placing two
centuries and a half between him and the event he records, and his chronicle
may have been tampered with.
The historical discrepancies are sufficiently glaring to make the story
more than questionable.
Leo IV. died on the 17th July, 855; and Benedict III. was consecrated on
the 1st September in the same year; so that it is impossible to insert
between their pontificates a reign of two years, five months, and four days.
It is, however, true that there was an antipope elected upon the death of
Leo, at the instance of the Emperor Louis; but his name was Anastasius. This
man possessed himself of the palace of the Popes, and obtained the
incarceration of Benedict. However, his supporters almost immediately
deserted him, and Benedict assumed the pontificate. The reign of Benedict was
only for two years and a half, so that Anastasius cannot be the supposed
Joan; nor do we hear of any charge brought against him to the effect of his
being a woman. But the stout partisans of the Pope-Joan tale assert, on the
authority of the "Annales Augustani,"[29] and some other, but late
authorities, that the female Pope was John VIII., who consecrated Louis II.
of France, and Ethelwolf of England. Here again is confusion. Ethelwolf sent
Alfred to Rome in 853, and the youth received regal unction from the hands of
Leo IV. In 855 Ethelwolf visited Rome, it is true, but was not consecrated by
the existing Pope, whilst Charles the Bald was anointed by John VIII. in 875.
John VIII. was a Roman, son of Gundus, and an archdeacon of the Eternal City.
He assumed the triple crown in 872, and reigned till December 18, 882. John
took an active part in the troubles of the Church under the incursions of the
Sarasins, and 325 letters of his are extant, addressed to the princes and
prelates of his day.
[29] These Annals were written in 1135.
Any one desirous of pursuing this examination into the untenable nature of
the story may find an excellent summary of the arguments used on both sides
in Gieseler, "Lehrbuch," &c., Cunningham's trans., vol. ii. pp. 20, 21,
or in Bayle, "Dictionnaire," tom. iii. art. Papesse.
The arguments in favor of the myth may be seen in Spanheim,﹃Exercit. de
Papa Fœmina,﹄Opp. tom. ii. p. 577, or in Lenfant,﹃Histoire de la
Papesse Jeanne,﹄La Haye, 1736, 2 vols. 12mo.
The arguments on the other side may be had in﹃Allatii Confutatio Fabulæ
de Johanna Papissa,﹄Colon. 1645; in Le Quien, "Oriens Christianus," tom.
iii. p. 777; and in the pages of the Lutheran Huemann,﹃Sylloge Diss.
Sacras.,﹄tom. i. par. ii. p. 352.
The final development of this extraordinary story, under the delicate
fingers of the German and French Protestant controversialists, may not prove
uninteresting.
Joan was the daughter of an English missionary, who left England to preach
the Gospel to the recently converted Saxons. She was born at Engelheim, and
according to different authors she was christened Agnes, Gerberta, Joanna,
Margaret, Isabel, Dorothy, or Jutt—the last must have been a nickname
surely! She early distinguished herself for genius and love of letters. A
young monk of Fulda having conceived for her a violent passion, which she
returned with ardor, she deserted her parents, dressed herself in male
attire, and in the sacred precincts of Fulda divided her affections between
the youthful monk and the musty books of the monastic library. Not satisfied
with the restraints of conventual life, nor finding the library sufficiently
well provided with books of abstruse science, she eloped with her young man,
and after visiting England, France, and Italy, she brought him to Athens,
where she addicted herself with unflagging devotion to her literary pursuits.
Wearied out by his journey, the monk expired in the arms of the blue-stocking
who had influenced his life for evil, and the young lady of so many aliases
was for a while inconsolable. She left Athens and repaired to Rome. There she
opened a school and acquired such a reputation for learning and feigned
sanctity, that, on the death of Leo IV., she was unanimously elected Pope.
For two years and five months, under the name of John VIII., she filled the
papal chair with reputation, no one suspecting her sex. But having taken a
fancy to one of the cardinals, by him she became pregnant. At length arrived
the time of Rogation processions. Whilst passing the street between the
amphitheatre and St. Clement's, she was seized with violent pains, fell to
the ground amidst the crowd, and, whilst her attendants ministered to her,
was delivered of a son. Some say the child and mother died on the spot, some
that she survived but was incarcerated, some that the child was spirited away
to be the Antichrist of the last days. A marble monument representing the
papess with her baby was erected on the spot, which was declared to be
accursed to all ages.
I have little doubt myself that Pope Joan is an impersonification of the
great whore of Revelation, seated on the seven hills, and is the popular
expression of the idea prevalent from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries,
that the mystery of iniquity was somehow working in the papal court. The
scandal of the Antipopes, the utter worldliness and pride of others, the
spiritual fornication with the kings of the earth, along with the words of
Revelation prophesying the advent of an adulterous woman who should rule over
the imperial city, and her connection with Antichrist, crystallized into this
curious myth, much as the floating uncertainty as to the signification of our
Lord's words,﹃There be some standing here which shall not taste of death
till they see the kingdom of God,﹄condensed into the myth of the Wandering
Jew.
The literature connected with Antichrist is voluminous. I need only
specify some of the most curious works which have appeared on the subject.
St. Hippolytus and Rabanus Maurus have been already alluded to. Commodianus
wrote "Carmen Apologeticum adversus Gentes," which has been published by Dom
Pitra in his "Spicilegium Solesmense," with an introduction containing Jewish
and Christian traditions relating to Antichrist.﹃De Turpissima Conceptione,
Nativitate, et aliis Præsagiis Diaboliciis illius Turpissimi Hominis
Antichristi,﹄is the title of a strange little volume published by Lenoir in
A. D. 1500, containing rude yet characteristic woodcuts, representing the
birth, life, and death of the Man of Sin, each picture accompanied by French
verses in explanation. An equally remarkable illustrated work on Antichrist
is the famous "Liber de Antichristo," a blockbook of an early date. It is in
twenty-seven folios, and is excessively rare. Dibdin has reproduced three of
the plates in his "Bibliotheca Spenseriana," and Falckenstein has given full
details of the work in his "Geschichte der Buchdruckerkunst."
There is an Easter miracle-play of the twelfth century, still extant, the
subject of which is the "Life and Death of Antichrist." More curious still is
the "Farce de l'Antéchrist et de Trois Femmes"—a composition of the
sixteenth century, when that mysterious personage occupied all brains. The
farce consists in a scene at a fish-stall, with three good ladies quarrelling
over some fish. Antichrist steps in,—for no particular reason that one
can see,—upsets fish and fish-women, sets them fighting, and skips off
the stage. The best book on Antichrist, and that most full of learning and
judgment, is Malvenda's great work in two folio volumes,﹃De Antichristo,
libri xii.﹄Lyons, 1647.
For the fable of the Pope Joan, see J. Lenfant,﹃Histoire de la Papesse
Jeanne.﹄La Haye, 1736, 2 vols. 12mo.﹃Allatii Confutatio Fabulæ de Johanna
Papissa.﹄Colon. 1645.
IX. — THE MAN IN THE MOON
From L. Richter.
EVERY one knows that the moon is inhabited by a man with a
bundle of sticks on his back, who has been exiled thither for many centuries,
and who is so far off that he is beyond the reach of death.
He has once visited this earth, if the nursery rhyme is to be credited,
when it asserts that—
"The Man in the Moon
Came down too soon,
And asked his way to Norwich;"
but whether he ever reached that city, the same authority
does not state.
The story as told by nurses is, that this man was found by Moses gathering
sticks on a Sabbath, and that, for this crime, he was doomed to reside in the
moon till the end of all things; and they refer to Numbers xv.
32-36:—
"And while the children of Israel were in the wilderness,
they found a man that gathered sticks upon the Sabbath day. And they that
found him gathering sticks brought him unto Moses and Aaron, and unto all the
congregation. And they put him in ward, because it was not declared what
should be done to him. And the Lord said unto Moses, The man shall be surely
put to death: all the congregation shall stone him with stones without the
camp. And all the congregation brought him without the camp, and stoned him
with stones till he died."
Of course, in the sacred writings there is no allusion to the moon.
The German tale is as follows:—
Ages ago there went one Sunday morning an old man into the
wood to hew sticks. He cut a fagot and slung it on a stout staff, cast it
over his shoulder, and began to trudge home with his burden. On his way he
met a handsome man in Sunday suit, walking towards the Church; this man
stopped and asked the fagot-bearer, "Do you know that this is Sunday on
earth, when all must rest from their labors?"
"Sunday on earth, or Monday in heaven, it is all one to me!"
laughed the wood-cutter.
"Then bear your bundle forever," answered the stranger;﹃and
as you value not Sunday on earth, yours shall be a perpetual Moon-day in
heaven; and you shall stand for eternity in the moon, a warning to all
Sabbath-breakers.﹄Thereupon the stranger vanished, and the man was caught up
with his stock and his fagot into the moon, where he stands yet.
The superstition seems to be old in Germany, for the full moon is spoken
of as wadel, or wedel, a fagot. Tobler relates the story thus:
"An arma ma ket alawel am Sonnti holz ufglesa. Do hedem der liebe Gott dwahl
gloh, öb er lieber wott ider sonn verbrenna oder im mo verfrura, do willer
lieber inn mo ihi. Dromm siedma no jetz an ma im mo inna, wenns wedel ist. Er
hed a püscheli uffem rogga."[30] That is to say, he was given the choice of
burning in the sun, or of freezing in the moon; he chose the latter; and now
at full moon he is to be seen seated with his bundle of fagots on his
back.
[30] Tobler, Appenz. Sprachsbuch, 20.
In Schaumburg-Lippe,[31] the story goes, that a man and a woman stand in
the moon, the man because he strewed brambles and thorns on the church path,
so as to hinder people from attending Mass on Sunday morning; the woman
because she made butter on that day. The man carries his bundle of thorns,
the woman her butter-tub. A similar tale is told in Swabia and in Marken.
Fischart[32] says, that there﹃is to be seen in the moon a manikin who stole
wood;﹄and Prætorius, in his description of the world,[33] that
"superstitious people assert that the black flecks in the moon are a man who
gathered wood on a Sabbath, and is therefore turned into stone."
[31] Wolf, Zeitschrift für Deut. Myth. i. 168.
[32] Fischart, Garg. 130.
[33] Prætorius, i. 447.
The Dutch household myth is, that the unhappy man was caught stealing
vegetables. Dante calls him Cain:—
"... Now doth Cain with fork of thorns confine,
On either hemisphere, touching the wave
Beneath the towers of Seville. Yesternight
The moon was round."
Hell, cant. xx.
And again,—
"... Tell, I pray thee, whence the gloomy spots
Upon this body, which below on earth
Give rise to talk of Cain in fabling quaint?"
Paradise, cant. ii.
Chaucer, in the "Testament of Cresside," adverts to the man in the moon,
and attributes to him the same idea of theft. Of Lady Cynthia, or the moon,
he says,—
"Her gite was gray and full of spottis blake,
And on her brest a chorle painted ful even,
Bering a bush of thornis on his backe,
Whiche for his theft might clime so ner the heaven."
Ritson, among his "Ancient Songs," gives one extracted from a manuscript
of the time of Edward II., on the Man in the Moon, but in very obscure
language. The first verse, altered into more modern orthography, runs as
follows:—
"Man in the Moon stand and stit,
On his bot-fork his burden he beareth,
It is much wonder that he do na doun slit,
For doubt lest he fall he shudd'reth and shivereth.
............
"When the frost freezes must chill he bide,
The thorns be keen his attire so teareth,
Nis no wight in the world there wot when he syt,
Ne bote it by the hedge what weeds he weareth."
Alexander Necham, or Nequam, a writer of the twelfth century, in
commenting on the dispersed shadows in the moon, thus alludes to the vulgar
belief: "Nonne novisti quid vulgus vocet rusticum in luna portantem spinas?
Unde quidam vulgariter loquens ait:—
"Rusticus in Luna,
Quem sarcina deprimit una
Monstrat per opinas
Nulli prodesse rapinas,"
which may be translated thus:﹃Do you know what they call the rustic in
the moon, who carries the fagot of sticks?﹄So that one vulgarly speaking
says,—
"See the rustic in the Moon,
How his bundle weighs him down;
Thus his sticks the truth reveal,
It never profits man to steal."
Shakspeare refers to the same individual in his "Midsummer Night's Dream."
Quince the carpenter, giving directions for the performance of the play of
"Pyramus and Thisbe," orders:﹃One must come in with a bush of thorns and a
lantern, and say he comes in to disfigure, or to present, the person of
Moonshine.﹄And the enacter of this part says, "All I have to say is, to tell
you that the lantern is the moon; I the man in the moon; this thorn-bush my
thorn-bush; and this dog my dog."
Also "Tempest," Act 2, Scene 2:—
"Cal. Hast thou not dropt from heaven?
"Steph. Out o' th' moon, I do assure thee. I was the
man in th' moon when time was.
"Cal. I have seen thee in her; and I do adore thee.
My mistress showed me thee, and thy dog, and thy bush."
The dog I have myself had pointed out to me by an old Devonshire crone. If
popular superstition places a dog in the moon, it puts a lamb in the sun; for
in the same county it is said that those who see the sun rise on Easter-day,
may behold in the orb the lamb and flag.
I believe this idea of locating animals in the two great luminaries of
heaven to be very ancient, and to be a relic of a primeval superstition of
the Aryan race.
There is an ancient pictorial representation of our friend the
Sabbath-breaker in Gyffyn Church, near Conway. The roof of the chancel is
divided into compartments, in four of which are the Evangelistic symbols,
rudely, yet effectively painted. Besides these symbols is delineated in each
compartment an orb of heaven. The sun, the moon, and two stars, are placed at
the feet of the Angel, the Bull, the Lion, and the Eagle. The representation
of the moon is as below; in the disk is the conventional man with his bundle
of sticks, but without the dog. There is also a curious seal appended to a
deed preserved in the Record Office, dated the 9th year of Edward the Third
(1335), bearing the man in the moon as its device. The deed is one of
conveyance of a messuage, barn, and four acres of ground, in the parish of
Kingston-on-Thames, from Walter de Grendesse, clerk, to Margaret his mother.
On the seal we see the man carrying his sticks, and the moon surrounds him.
There are also a couple of stars added, perhaps to show that he is in the
sky. The legend on the seal reads:—
"Te Waltere docebo
cur spinas phebo
gero,"
which may be translated, "I will teach thee, Walter, why I
carry thorns in the moon."
Representation of the moon in Gyffyn Church.
The seal with the legend visible.
The general superstition with regard to the spots in the moon may briefly
be summed up thus: A man is located in the moon; he is a thief or
Sabbath-breaker;[34] he has a pole over his shoulder, from which is suspended
a bundle of sticks or thorns. In some places a woman is believed to accompany
him, and she has a butter-tub with her; in other localities she is replaced
by a dog.
[34] Hebel, in his charming poem on the Man in the Moon,
in "Allemanische Gedichte," makes him both thief and Sabbath-breaker.
The belief in the Moon-man seems to exist among the natives of British
Columbia; for I read in one of Mr. Duncan's letters to the Church Missionary
Society, "One very dark night I was told that there was a moon to see on the
beach. On going to see, there was an illuminated disk, with the figure of a
man upon it. The water was then very low, and one of the conjuring parties
had lit up this disk at the water's edge. They had made it of wax, with great
exactness, and presently it was at full. It was an imposing sight. Nothing
could be seen around it; but the Indians suppose that the medicine party are
then holding converse with the man in the moon.... After a short time the
moon waned away, and the conjuring party returned whooping to their
house."
Now let us turn to Scandinavian mythology, and see what we learn from that
source.
Mâni, the moon, stole two children from their parents, and carried them up
to heaven. Their names were Hjuki and Bil. They had been drawing water from
the well Byrgir, in the bucket Sœgr, suspended from the pole Simul,
which they bore upon their shoulders. These children, pole, and bucket were
placed in heaven, "where they could be seen from earth." This refers
undoubtedly to the spots in the moon; and so the Swedish peasantry explain
these spots to this day, as representing a boy and a girl bearing a pail of
water between them. Are we not reminded at once of our nursery
rhyme—
"Jack and Jill went up a hill
To fetch a pail of water;
Jack fell down, and broke his crown,
And Jill came tumbling after"?
This verse, which to us seems at first sight nonsense, I have no
hesitation in saying has a high antiquity, and refers to the Eddaic Hjuki and
Bil. The names indicate as much. Hjuki, in Norse, would be pronounced Juki,
which would readily become Jack; and Bil, for the sake of euphony, and in
order to give a female name to one of the children, would become Jill.
The fall of Jack, and the subsequent fall of Jill, simply represent the
vanishing of one moon-spot after another, as the moon wanes.
But the old Norse myth had a deeper signification than merely an
explanation of the moon-spots.
Hjuki is derived from the verb jakka, to heap or pile together, to
assemble and increase; and Bil from bila, to break up or dissolve. Hjuki and
Bil, therefore, signify nothing more than the waxing and waning of the moon,
and the water they are represented as bearing signifies the fact that the
rainfall depends on the phases of the moon. Waxing and waning were
individualized, and the meteorological fact of the connection of the rain
with the moon was represented by the children as water-bearers.
But though Jack and Jill became by degrees dissevered in the popular mind
from the moon, the original myth went through a fresh phase, and exists still
under a new form. The Norse superstition attributed theft to the moon,
and the vulgar soon began to believe that the figure they saw in the moon was
the thief. The lunar specks certainly may be made to resemble one figure, and
only a lively imagination can discern two. The girl soon dropped out of
popular mythology, the boy oldened into a venerable man, he retained his
pole, and the bucket was transformed into the thing he had
stolen—sticks or vegetables. The theft was in some places exchanged for
Sabbath-breaking, especially among those in Protestant countries who were
acquainted with the Bible story of the stick-gatherer.
The Indian superstition is worth examining, because of the connection
existing between Indian and European mythology, on account of our belonging
to the same Aryan stock.
According to a Buddhist legend, Sâkyamunni himself, in one of his earlier
stages of existence, was a hare, and lived in friendship with a fox and an
ape. In order to test the virtue of the Bodhisattwa, Indra came to the
friends, in the form of an old man, asking for food. Hare, ape, and fox went
forth in quest of victuals for their guest. The two latter returned from
their foraging expedition successful, but the hare had found nothing. Then,
rather than that he should treat the old man with inhospitality, the hare had
a fire kindled, and cast himself into the flames, that he might himself
become food for his guest. In reward for this act of self-sacrifice, Indra
carried the hare to heaven, and placed him in the moon.[35]
[35]﹃Mémoires ... par Hjouen Thsang, traduits du Chinois
par Stanislas Julien,﹄i. 375. Upham, "Sacred Books of Ceylon," iii. 309.
Here we have an old man and a hare in connection with the lunar planet,
just as in Shakspeare we have a fagot-bearer and a dog.
The fable rests upon the name of the moon in Sanskrit, çaçin, or﹃that
marked with the hare;﹄but whether the belief in the spots taking the shape
of a hare gave the name çaçin to the moon, or the lunar name çaçin originated
the belief, it is impossible for us to say.
Grounded upon this myth is the curious story of﹃The Hare and the
Elephant,﹄in the "Pantschatantra," an ancient collection of Sanskrit fables.
It will be found as the first tale in the third book. I have room only for an
outline of the story.
THE CRAFTY HARE
In a certain forest lived a mighty elephant, king of a herd, Toothy by
name. On a certain occasion there was a long drought, so that pools, tanks,
swamps, and lakes were dried up. Then the elephants sent out exploring
parties in search of water. A young one discovered an extensive lake
surrounded with trees, and teeming with water-fowl. It went by the name of
the Moon-lake. The elephants, delighted at the prospect of having an
inexhaustible supply of water, marched off to the spot, and found their most
sanguine hopes realized. Round about the lake, in the sandy soil, were
innumerable hare warrens; and as the herd of elephants trampled on the
ground, the hares were severely injured, their homes broken down, their
heads, legs, and backs crushed beneath the ponderous feet of the monsters of
the forest. As soon as the herd had withdrawn, the hares assembled, some
halting, some dripping with blood, some bearing the corpses of their
cherished infants, some with piteous tales of ruination in their houses, all
with tears streaming from their eyes, and wailing forth, "Alas, we are lost!
The elephant-herd will return, for there is no water elsewhere, and that will
be the death of all of us."
But the wise and prudent Longear volunteered to drive the herd away; and
he succeeded in this manner: Longear went to the elephants, and having
singled out their king, he addressed him as follows:—
"Ha, ha! bad elephant! what brings you with such thoughtless frivolity to
this strange lake? Back with you at once!"
When the king of the elephants heard this, he asked in astonishment,
"Pray, who are you?"
"I," replied Longear,—"I am Vidschajadatta by name; the hare who
resides in the Moon. Now am I sent by his Excellency the Moon as an
ambassador to you. I speak to you in the name of the Moon."
"Ahem! Hare," said the elephant, somewhat staggered; "and what message
have you brought me from his Excellency the Moon?"
"You have this day injured several hares. Are you not aware that they are
the subjects of me? If you value your life, venture not near the lake again.
Break my command, and I shall withdraw my beams from you at night, and your
bodies will be consumed with perpetual sun."
The elephant, after a short meditation, said, "Friend! it is true that I
have acted against the rights of the excellent Majesty of the Moon. I should
wish to make an apology; how can I do so?"
The hare replied, "Come along with me, and I will show you."
The elephant asked, "Where is his Excellency at present?"
The other replied, "He is now in the lake, hearing the complaints of the
maimed hares."
"If that be the case," said the elephant, humbly, "bring me to my lord,
that I may tender him my submission."
So the hare conducted the king of the elephants to the edge of the lake,
and showed him the reflection of the moon in the water, saying, "There stands
our lord in the midst of the water, plunged in meditation; reverence him with
devotion, and then depart with speed."
Thereupon the elephant poked his proboscis into the water, and muttered a
fervent prayer. By so doing he set the water in agitation, so that the
reflection of the moon was all of a quiver.
"Look!" exclaimed the hare; "his Majesty is trembling with rage at
you!"
"Why is his supreme Excellency enraged with me?" asked the elephant.
"Because you have set the water in motion. Worship him, and then be
off!"
The elephant let his ears droop, bowed his great head to the earth, and
after having expressed in suitable terms his regret for having annoyed the
Moon, and the hare dwelling in it, he vowed never to trouble the Moon-lake
again. Then he departed, and the hares have ever since lived there
unmolested.
X. THE MOUNTAIN OF VENUS
RAGGED, bald, and desolate, as though a curse rested upon
it, rises the Hörselberg out of the rich and populous land between Eisenach
and Gotha, looking, from a distance, like a huge stone sarcophagus—a
sarcophagus in which rests in magical slumber, till the end of all things, a
mysterious world of wonders.
High up on the north-west flank of the mountain, in a precipitous wall of
rock, opens a cavern, called the Hörselloch, from the depths of which issues
a muffled roar of water, as though a subterraneous stream were rushing over
rapidly-whirling millwheels.﹃When I have stood alone on the ridge of the
mountain,﹄says Bechstein,﹃after having sought the chasm in vain, I have
heard a mighty rush, like that of falling water, beneath my feet, and after
scrambling down the scarp, have found myself—how, I never knew—in
front of the cave.﹄("Sagenschatz des Thüringes-landes," 1835.)
In ancient days, according to the Thüringian Chronicles, bitter cries and
long-drawn moans were heard issuing from this cavern; and at night, wild
shrieks and the burst of diabolical laughter would ring from it over the
vale, and fill the inhabitants with terror. It was supposed that this hole
gave admittance to Purgatory; and the popular but faulty derivation of Hörsel
was Höre, die Seele—Hark, the Souls!
But another popular belief respecting this mountain was, that in it Venus,
the pagan Goddess of Love, held her court, in all the pomp and revelry of
heathendom; and there were not a few who declared that they had seen fair
forms of female beauty beckoning them from the mouth of the chasm, and that
they had heard dulcet strains of music well up from the abyss above the
thunder of the falling, unseen torrent. Charmed by the music, and allured by
the spectral forms, various individuals had entered the cave, and none had
returned, except the Tannhäuser, of whom more anon. Still does the Hörselberg
go by the name of the Venusberg, a name frequently used in the middle ages,
but without its locality being defined.
"In 1398, at midday, there appeared suddenly three great fires in the air,
which presently ran together into one globe of flame, parted again, and
finally sank into the Hörselberg," says the Thüringian Chronicle.
And now for the story of Tannhäuser.
A French knight was riding over the beauteous meadows in the Hörsel vale
on his way to Wartburg, where the Landgrave Hermann was holding a gathering
of minstrels, who were to contend in song for a prize.
Tannhäuser was a famous minnesinger, and all his lays were of love and of
women, for his heart was full of passion, and that not of the purest and
noblest description.
It was towards dusk that he passed the cliff in which is the Hörselloch,
and as he rode by, he saw a white glimmering figure of matchless beauty
standing before him, and beckoning him to her. He knew her at once, by her
attributes and by her superhuman perfection, to be none other than Venus. As
she spake to him, the sweetest strains of music floated in the air, a soft
roseate light glowed around her, and nymphs of exquisite loveliness scattered
roses at her feet. A thrill of passion ran through the veins of the
minnesinger; and, leaving his horse, he followed the apparition. It led him
up the mountain to the cave, and as it went flowers bloomed upon the soil,
and a radiant track was left for Tannhäuser to follow. He entered the cavern,
and descended to the palace of Venus in the heart of the mountain.
Seven years of revelry and debauch were passed, and the minstrel's heart
began to feel a strange void. The beauty, the magnificence, the variety of
the scenes in the pagan goddess's home, and all its heathenish pleasures,
palled upon him, and he yearned for the pure fresh breezes of earth, one look
up at the dark night sky spangled with stars, one glimpse of simple
mountain-flowers, one tinkle of sheep-bells. At the same time his conscience
began to reproach him, and he longed to make his peace with God. In vain did
he entreat Venus to permit him to depart, and it was only when, in the
bitterness of his grief, he called upon the Virgin-Mother, that a rift in the
mountain-side appeared to him, and he stood again above ground.
How sweet was the morning air, balmy with the scent of hay, as it rolled
up the mountain to him, and fanned his haggard cheek! How delightful to him
was the cushion of moss and scanty grass after the downy couches of the
palace of revelry below! He plucked the little heather-bells, and held them
before him; the tears rolled from his eyes, and moistened his thin and wasted
hands. He looked up at the soft blue sky and the newly-risen sun, and his
heart overflowed. What were the golden, jewel-incrusted, lamp-lit vaults
beneath to that pure dome of God's building!
The chime of a village church struck sweetly on his ear, satiated with
Bacchanalian songs; and he hurried down the mountain to the church which
called him. There he made his confession; but the priest, horror-struck at
his recital, dared not give him absolution, but passed him on to another. And
so he went from one to another, till at last he was referred to the Pope
himself. To the Pope he went. Urban IV. then occupied the chair of St. Peter.
To him Tannhäuser related the sickening story of his guilt, and prayed for
absolution. Urban was a hard and stern man, and shocked at the immensity of
the sin, he thrust the penitent indignantly from him, exclaiming, "Guilt such
as thine can never, never be remitted. Sooner shall this staff in my hand
grow green and blossom, than that God should pardon thee!"
Then Tannhäuser, full of despair, and with his soul darkened, went away,
and returned to the only asylum open to him, the Venusberg. But lo! three
days after he had gone, Urban discovered that his pastoral staff had put
forth buds, and had burst into flower. Then he sent messengers after
Tannhäuser, and they reached the Hörsel vale to hear that a wayworn man, with
haggard brow and bowed head, had just entered the Hörselloch. Since then
Tannhäuser has not been seen.
Such is the sad yet beautiful story of Tannhäuser. It is a very ancient
myth Christianized, a wide-spread tradition localized. Originally heathen, it
has been transformed, and has acquired new beauty by an infusion of
Christianity. Scattered over Europe, it exists in various forms, but in none
so graceful as that attached to the Hörselberg. There are, however, other
Venusbergs in Germany; as, for instance, in Swabia, near Waldsee; another
near Ufhausen, at no great distance from Freiburg (the same story is told of
this Venusberg as of the Hörselberg); in Saxony there is a Venusberg not far
from Wolkenstein. Paracelsus speaks of a Venusberg in Italy, referring to
that in which Æneas Sylvius (Ep. 16) says Venus or a Sibyl resides, occupying
a cavern, and assuming once a week the form of a serpent. Geiler v.
Keysersperg, a quaint old preacher of the fifteenth century, speaks of the
witches assembling on the Venusberg.
The story, either in prose or verse, has often been printed. Some of the
earliest editions are the following:—
"Das Lied von dem Danhewser." Nürnberg, without date; the same, Nürnberg,
1515.—"Das Lyedt v. d. Thanheuser." Leyptzk, 1520.—"Das Lied v.
d. Danheüser," reprinted by Bechstein, 1835.—"Das Lied vom edlen
Tanheuser, Mons Veneris." Frankfort, 1614; Leipzig, 1668.—"Twe lede
volgen Dat erste vain Danhüsser." Without date.—"Van heer Danielken."
Tantwerpen, 1544.—A Danish version in "Nyerup, Danske Viser," No.
VIII.
Let us now see some of the forms which this remarkable myth assumed in
other countries. Every popular tale has its root, a root which may be traced
among different countries, and though the accidents of the story may vary,
yet the substance remains unaltered. It has been said that the common people
never invent new story-radicals any more than we invent new word-roots; and
this is perfectly true. The same story-root remains, but it is varied
according to the temperament of the narrator or the exigencies of
localization. The story-root of the Venusberg is this:—
The underground folk seek union with human beings.
a. A man is enticed into their abode, where he unites with a woman of the
underground race.
b. He desires to revisit the earth, and escapes.
c. He returns again to the region below.
Now, there is scarcely a collection of folk-lore which does not contain a
story founded on this root. It appears in every branch of the Aryan family,
and examples might be quoted from Modern Greek, Albanian, Neapolitan, French,
German, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish, Icelandic, Scotch, Welsh, and other
collections of popular tales. I have only space to mention some.
There is a Norse Tháttr of a certain Helgi Thorir's son, which is, in its
present form, a production of the fourteenth century. Helgi and his brother
Thorstein went on a cruise to Finnmark, or Lapland. They reached a ness, and
found the land covered with forest. Helgi explored this forest, and lighted
suddenly on a party of red-dressed women riding upon red horses. These ladies
were beautiful and of troll race. One surpassed the others in beauty, and she
was their mistress. They erected a tent and prepared a feast. Helgi observed
that all their vessels were of silver and gold. The lady, who named herself
Ingibjorg, advanced towards the Norseman, and invited him to live with her.
He feasted and lived with the trolls for three days, and then returned to his
ship, bringing with him two chests of silver and gold, which Ingibjorg had
given him. He had been forbidden to mention where he had been and with whom;
so he told no one whence he had obtained the chests. The ships sailed, and he
returned home.
One winter's night Helgi was fetched away from home, in the midst of a
furious storm, by two mysterious horsemen, and no one was able to ascertain
for many years what had become of him, till the prayers of the king, Olaf,
obtained his release, and then he was restored to his father and brother, but
he was thenceforth blind. All the time of his absence he had been with the
red-vested lady in her mysterious abode of Glœsisvellir.
The Scotch story of Thomas of Ercildoune is the same story. Thomas met
with a strange lady, of elfin race, beneath Eildon Tree, who led him into the
underground land, where he remained with her for seven years. He then
returned to earth, still, however, remaining bound to come to his royal
mistress whenever she should summon him. Accordingly, while Thomas was making
merry with his friends in the Tower of Ercildoune, a person came running in,
and told, with marks of fear and astonishment, that a hart and a hind had
left the neighboring forest, and were parading the street of the village.
Thomas instantly arose, left his house, and followed the animals into the
forest, from which he never returned. According to popular belief, he still
"drees his weird" in Fairy Land, and is one day expected to revisit earth.
(Scott, "Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.") Compare with this the ancient
ballad of Tamlane.
Debes relates that﹃it happened a good while since, when the burghers of
Bergen had the commerce of the Faroe Isles, that there was a man in Serraade,
called Jonas Soideman, who was kept by the spirits in a mountain during the
space of seven years, and at length came out, but lived afterwards in great
distress and fear, lest they should again take him away; wherefore people
were obliged to watch him in the night.﹄The same author mentions another
young man who had been carried away, and after his return was removed a
second time, upon the eve of his marriage.
Gervase of Tilbury says that﹃in Catalonia there is a lofty mountain,
named Cavagum, at the foot of which runs a river with golden sands, in the
vicinity of which there are likewise silver mines. This mountain is steep,
and almost inaccessible. On its top, which is always covered with ice and
snow, is a black and bottomless lake, into which if a stone be cast, a
tempest suddenly arises; and near this lake is the portal of the palace of
demons.﹄He then tells how a young damsel was spirited in there, and spent
seven years with the mountain spirits. On her return to earth she was thin
and withered, with wandering eyes, and almost bereft of understanding.
A Swedish story is to this effect. A young man was on his way to his
bride, when he was allured into a mountain by a beautiful elfin woman. With
her he lived forty years, which passed as an hour; on his return to earth all
his old friends and relations were dead, or had forgotten him, and finding no
rest there, he returned to his mountain elf-land.
In Pomerania, a laborer's son, Jacob Dietrich of Rambin, was enticed away
in the same manner.
There is a curious story told by Fordun in his "Scotichronicon," which has
some interest in connection with the legend of the Tannhäuser. He relates
that in the year 1050, a youth of noble birth had been married in Rome, and
during the nuptial feast, being engaged in a game of ball, he took off his
wedding-ring, and placed it on the finger of a statue of Venus. When he
wished to resume it, he found that the stony hand had become clinched, so
that it was impossible to remove the ring. Thenceforth he was haunted by the
Goddess Venus, who constantly whispered in his ear,﹃Embrace me; I am Venus,
whom you have wedded; I will never restore your ring.﹄However, by the
assistance of a priest, she was at length forced to give it up to its
rightful owner.
The classic legend of Ulysses, held captive for eight years by the nymph
Calypso in the Island of Ogygia, and again for one year by the enchantress
Circe, contains the root of the same story of the Tannhäuser.
What may have been the significance of the primeval story-radical it is
impossible for us now to ascertain; but the legend, as it shaped itself in
the middle ages, is certainly indicative of the struggle between the new and
the old faith.
We see thinly veiled in Tannhäuser the story of a man, Christian in name,
but heathen at heart, allured by the attractions of paganism, which seems to
satisfy his poetic instincts, and which gives full rein to his passions. But
these excesses pall on him after a while, and the religion of sensuality
leaves a great void in his breast.
He turns to Christianity, and at first it seems to promise all that he
requires. But alas! he is repelled by its ministers. On all sides he is met
by practice widely at variance with profession. Pride, worldliness, want of
sympathy exist among those who should be the foremost to guide, sustain, and
receive him. All the warm springs which gushed up in his broken heart are
choked, his softened spirit is hardened again, and he returns in despair to
bury his sorrows and drown his anxieties in the debauchery of his former
creed.
A sad picture, but doubtless one very true.
XI. — FATALITY OF NUMBERS
The laws governing numbers are so perplexing to the
uncultivated mind, and the results arrived at by calculation are so
astonishing, that it cannot be matter of surprise if superstition has
attached itself to numbers.
But even to those who are instructed in numeration, there is much that is
mysterious and unaccountable, much that only an advanced mathematician can
explain to his own satisfaction. The neophyte sees the numbers obedient to
certain laws; but why they obey these laws he cannot understand; and
the fact of his not being able so to do, tends to give to numbers an
atmosphere of mystery which impresses him with awe.
For instance, the property of the number 9, discovered, I believe, by W.
Green, who died in 1794, is inexplicable to any one but a mathematician. The
property to which I allude is this, that when 9 is multiplied by 2, by 3, by
4, by 5, by 6, &c., it will be found that the digits composing the
product, when added together, give 9. Thus:—
2 × 9 = 18, and 1 + 8 = 9
3 × 9 = 27, 『 2 + 7 = 9
4 × 9 = 36, 』 3 + 6 = 9
5 × 9 = 45, 『 4 + 5 = 9
6 × 9 = 54, 』 5 + 4 = 9
7 × 9 = 63, 『 6 + 3 = 9
8 × 9 = 72, 』 7 + 2 = 9
9 × 9 = 81, 『 8 + 1 = 9
10 × 9 = 90, 』 9 + 0 = 9
It will be noticed that 9 × 11 makes 99, the sum of the digits of which is
18 and not 9, but the sum of the digits 1 + 8 equals 9.
9 × 12 = 108, and 1 + 0 + 8 = 9
9 × 13 = 117, 『 1 + 1 + 7 = 9
9 × 14 = 126, 』 1 + 2 + 6 = 9
And so on to any extent.
M. de Maivan discovered another singular property of the same number. If
the order of the digits expressing a number be changed, and this number be
subtracted from the former, the remainder will be 9 or a multiple of 9, and,
being a multiple, the sum of its digits will be 9.
For instance, take the number 21, reverse the digits, and you have 12;
subtract 12 from 21, and the remainder is 9. Take 63, reverse the digits, and
subtract 36 from 63; you have 27, a multiple of 9, and 2 + 7 = 9. Once more,
the number 13 is the reverse of 31; the difference between these numbers is
18, or twice 9.
Again, the same property found in two numbers thus changed, is discovered
in the same numbers raised to any power.
Take 21 and 12 again. The square of 21 is 441, and the square of 12 is
144; subtract 144 from 441, and the remainder is 297, a multiple of 9;
besides, the digits expressing these powers added together give 9. The cube
of 21 is 9261, and that of 12 is 1728; their difference is 7533, also a
multiple of 9.
The number 37 has also somewhat remarkable properties; when multiplied by
3 or a multiple of 3 up to 27, it gives in the product three digits exactly
similar. From the knowledge of this the multiplication of 37 is greatly
facilitated, the method to be adopted being to multiply merely the first
cipher of the multiplicand by the first multiplier; it is then unnecessary to
proceed with the multiplication, it being sufficient to write twice to the
right hand the cipher obtained, so that the same digit will stand in the
unit, tens, and hundreds places.
For instance, take the results of the following table:—
37 multiplied by 3 gives 111, and 3 times 1 = 3
37 " 6 " 222, " 3 『 2 = 6
37 』 9 " 333, " 3 『 3 = 9
37 』 12 " 444, " 3 『 4 = 12
37 』 15 " 555, " 3 『 5 = 15
37 』 18 " 666, " 3 『 6 = 18
37 』 21 " 777, " 3 『 7 = 21
37 』 24 " 888, " 3 『 8 = 24
37 』 27 " 999, " 3 " 9 = 27
The singular property of numbers the most different, when added, to
produce the same sum, originated the use of magical squares for talismans.
Although the reason may be accounted for mathematically, yet numerous authors
have written concerning them, as though there were something "uncanny" about
them. But the most remarkable and exhaustive treatise on the subject is that
by a mathematician of Dijon, which is entitled﹃Traité complet des Carrés
magiques, pairs et impairs, simple et composés, à Bordures, Compartiments,
Croix, Chassis, Équerres, Bandes détachées, &c.; suivi d'un Traité des
Cubes magiques et d'un Essai sur les Cercles magiques; par M. Violle,
Géomètre, Chevalier de St. Louis, avec Atlas de 54 grandes Feuilles,
comprenant 400 figures.﹄Paris, 1837. 2 vols. 8vo., the first of 593 pages,
the second of 616. Price 36 fr.
I give three examples of magical squares:—
2 7 6
9 5 1
4 3 8
These nine ciphers are disposed in three horizontal lines; add the three
ciphers of each line, and the sum is 15; add the three ciphers in each
column, the sum is 15; add the three ciphers forming diagonals, and the sum
is 15.
1 2 3 4
2 3 2 3
4 1 4 1
3 4 1 2
The sum is 10.
1 7 13 19 25
18 24 5 6 12
10 11 17 23 4
22 3 9 15 16
14 20 21 2 8
The sum is 65.
But the connection of certain numbers with the dogmas of religion was
sufficient, besides their marvellous properties, to make superstition attach
itself to them. Because there were thirteen at the table when the Last Supper
was celebrated, and one of the number betrayed his Master, and then hung
himself, it is looked upon through Christendom as unlucky to sit down
thirteen at table, the consequence being that one of the number will die
before the year is out. "When I see," said Vouvenargues, "men of genius not
daring to sit down thirteen at table, there is no error, ancient or modern,
which astonishes me."
Nine, having been consecrated by Buddhism, is regarded with great
veneration by the Moguls and Chinese: the latter bow nine times on entering
the presence of their Emperor.
Three is sacred among Brahminical and Christian people, because of the
Trinity of the Godhead.
Pythagoras taught that each number had its own peculiar character, virtue,
and properties.
"The unit, or the monad," he says, "is the principle and the
end of all; it is this sublime knot which binds together the chain of causes;
it is the symbol of identity, of equality, of existence, of conservation, and
of general harmony. Having no parts, the monad represents Divinity; it
announces also order, peace, and tranquillity, which are founded on unity of
sentiments; consequently ONE is a good principle.
"The number TWO, or the dyad, the origin of contrasts, is
the symbol of diversity, or inequality, of division and of separation. TWO is
accordingly an evil principle, a number of bad augury, characterizing
disorder, confusion, and change.
"THREE, or the triad, is the first of unequals; it is the
number containing the most sublime mysteries, for everything is composed of
three substances; it represents God, the soul of the world, the spirit of
man." This number, which plays so great a part in the traditions of Asia, and
in the Platonic philosophy, is the image of the attributes of God.
"FOUR, or the tetrad, as the first mathematical power, is
also one of the chief elements; it represents the generating virtue, whence
come all combinations; it is the most perfect of numbers; it is the root of
all things. It is holy by nature, since it constitutes the Divine essence, by
recalling His unity, His power, His goodness, and His wisdom, the four
perfections which especially characterize God. Consequently, Pythagoricians
swear by the quaternary number, which gives the human soul its eternal
nature.
"The number FIVE, or the pentad, has a peculiar force in
sacred expiations; it is everything; it stops the power of poisons, and is
redoubted by evil spirits.
"The number SIX, or the hexad, is a fortunate number, and it
derives its merit from the first sculptors having divided the face into six
portions; but, according to the Chaldeans, the reason is, because God created
the world in six days.
"SEVEN, or the heptad, is a number very powerful for good or
for evil. It belongs especially to sacred things.
"The number EIGHT, or the octad, is the first cube, that is
to say, squared in all senses, as a die, proceeding from its base two, an
even number; so is man four-square, or perfect.
"The number NINE, or the ennead, being the multiple of
three, should be regarded as sacred.
"Finally, TEN, or the decad, is the measure of all, since it
contains all the numeric relations and harmonies. As the reunion of the four
first numbers, it plays an eminent part, since all the branches of science,
all nomenclatures, emanate from, and retire into it."
It is hardly necessary for me here to do more than mention the peculiar
character given to different numbers by Christianity. One is the numeral
indicating the Unity of the Godhead; Two points to the hypostatic union;
Three to the Blessed Trinity; Four to the Evangelists; Five to the Sacred
Wounds; Six is the number of sin; Seven that of the gifts of the Spirit;
Eight, that of the Beatitudes; Ten is the number of the commandments; Eleven
speaks of the Apostles after the loss of Judas; Twelve, of the complete
apostolic college.
I shall now point out certain numbers which have been regarded with
superstition, and certain events connected with numbers which are of curious
interest.
The number 14 has often been observed as having singularly influenced the
life of Henry IV. and other French princes. Let us take the history of
Henry.
On the 14th May, 1029, the first king of France named Henry was
consecrated, and on the 14th May, 1610, the last Henry was assassinated.
Fourteen letters enter into the composition of the name of Henri de
Bourbon, who was the 14th king bearing the titles of France and Navarre.
The 14th December, 1553, that is, 14 centuries, 14 decades, and 14 years
after the birth of Christ, Henry IV. was born; the ciphers of the date 1553,
when added together, giving the number 14.
The 14th May, 1554, Henry II. ordered the enlargement of the Rue de la
Ferronnerie. The circumstance of this order not having been carried out,
occasioned the murder of Henry IV. in that street, four times 14 years
after.
The 14th May, 1552, was the date of the birth of Marguérite de Valois,
first wife of Henry IV.
On the 14th May, 1588, the Parisians revolted against Henry III., at the
instigation of the Duke of Guise.
On the 14th March, 1590, Henry IV. gained the battle of Ivry.
On the 14th May, 1590, Henry was repulsed from the Fauxbourgs of
Paris.
On the 14th November, 1590, the Sixteen took oath to die rather than serve
Henry.
On the 14th November, 1592, the Parliament registered the Papal Bull
giving power to the legate to nominate a king to the exclusion of Henry.
On the 14th December, 1599, the Duke of Savoy was reconciled to Henry
IV.
On the 14th September, 1606, the Dauphin, afterwards Louis XIII., was
baptized.
On the 14th May, 1610, the king was stopped in the Rue de la Ferronnerie,
by his carriage becoming locked with a cart, on account of the narrowness of
the street. Ravaillac took advantage of the occasion for stabbing him.
Henry IV. lived four times 14 years, 14 weeks, and four times 14 days;
that is to say, 56 years and 5 months.
On the 14th May, 1643, died Louis XIII., son of Henry IV.; not only on the
same day of the same month as his father, but the date, 1643, when its
ciphers are added together, gives the number 14, just as the ciphers of the
date of the birth of his father gave 14.
Louis XIV. mounted the throne in 1643: 1 + 6 + 4 + 3 = 14.
He died in the year 1715: 1 + 7 + 1 + 5 = 14.
He lived 77 years, and 7 + 7 = 14.
Louis XV. mounted the throne in the same year; he died in 1774, which also
bears the stamp of 14, the extremes being 14, and the sum of the means 7 + 7
making 14.
Louis XVI. had reigned 14 years when he convoked the States General, which
was to bring about the Revolution.
The number of years between the assassination of Henry IV. and the
dethronement of Louis XVI. is divisible by 14.
Louis XVII. died in 1794; the extreme digits of the date are 14, and the
first two give his number.
The restoration of the Bourbons took place in 1814, also marked by the
extremes being 14; also by the sum of the ciphers making 14.
The following are other curious calculations made respecting certain
French kings.
Add the ciphers composing the year of the birth or of the death of some of
the kings of the third race, and the result of each sum is the titular number
of each prince. Thus:—
Louis IX. was born in 1215; add the four ciphers of this date, and you
have IX.
Charles VII. was born in 1402; the sum of 1 + 4 + 2 gives VII.
Louis XII. was born in 1461; and 1 + 4 + 6 + 1 = XII.
Henry IV. died in 1610; and 1 + 6 + 1 = twice IV.
Louis XIV. was crowned in 1643; and these four ciphers give XIV. The same
king died in 1715; and this date gives also XIV. He was aged 77 years, and
again 7 + 7 = 14.
Louis XVIII. was born in 1755; add the digits, and you have XVIII.
What is remarkable is, that this number 18 is double the number of the
king to whom the law first applies, and is triple the number of the kings to
whom it has applied.
Here is another curious calculation:—
Robespierre fell in 1794;
Napoleon in 1815, and Charles X. in 1830.
Now, the remarkable fact in connection with these dates is, that the sum
of the digits composing them, added to the dates, gives the date of the fall
of the successor. Robespierre fell in 1794; 1 + 7 + 9 + 4 = 21, 1794 + 21 =
1815, the date of the fall of Napoleon; 1 + 8 + 1 + 5 = 15, and 1815 + 15 =
1830, the date of the fall of Charles X.
There is a singular rule which has been supposed to determine the length
of the reigning Pope's life, in the earlier half of a century. Add his number
to that of his predecessor, to that add ten, and the result gives the year of
his death.
Pius VII. succeeded Pius VI.; 6 + 7 = 13; add 10, and the sum is 23. Pius
VII. died in 1823.
Leo XII. succeeded Pius VII.; 12 + 7 + 10 = 29; and Leo XII. died in
1829.
Pius VIII. succeeded Leo XII.; 8 + 12 + 10 = 30; and Pius VIII. died in
1830.
However, this calculation does not always apply.
Gregory XVI. ought to have died in 1834, but he did not actually vacate
his see till 1846.
It is also well known that an ancient tradition forbids the hope of any of
St. Peter's successors, pervenire ad annos Petri; i. e., to reign 25
years.
Those who sat longest are
Years. Months. Days.
Pius VI., who reigned 24 6 14
Hadrian I. 『 23 10 17
Pius VII. 』 23 5 6
Alexander III. 『 21 11 23
St. Silvester I. 』 21 0 4
There is one numerical curiosity of a very remarkable character, which I
must not omit.
The ancient Chamber of Deputies, such as it existed in 1830, was composed
of 402 members, and was divided into two parties. The one, numbering 221
members, declared itself strongly for the revolution of July; the other
party, numbering 181, did not favor a change. The result was the
constitutional monarchy, which re-established order after the three memorable
days of July. The parties were known by the following nicknames. The larger
was commonly called La queue de Robespierre, and the smaller, Les
honnêtes gens. Now, the remarkable fact is, that if we give to the
letters of the alphabet their numerical values as they stand in their order,
as 1 for A, 2 for B, 3 for C, and so on to Z, which is valued at 25, and then
write vertically on the left hand the words, La queue de Robespierre,
with the number equivalent to each letter opposite to it, and on the right
hand, in like manner, Les honnêtes gens, if each column of numbers be
summed up, the result is the number of members who formed each party.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
A B C D E F G H I J K L M
14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25
N O P Q R S T U V X Y Z
L—12 L—12
A— 1 E— 5
S—19
Q—17
U—21 H— 8
E— 5 O—15
U— 5 N—14
E— 5 N—14
E— 5
D— 4 T—20
E— 5 E—5
S—19
R—18
O—15 G— 7
B— 2 E— 5
E— 5 N—14
S—19S—19
P—16 181
I— 9
E— 5
R—18
R—18E—5
221
Majority 221
Minority 181
Total 402
Some coincidences of dates are very remarkable.
On the 25th August, 1569, the Calvinists massacred the Catholic nobles and
priests at Béarn and Navarre.
On the same day of the same month, in 1572, the Calvinists were massacred
in Paris and elsewhere.
On the 25th October, 1615, Louis XIII. married Anne of Austria, infanta of
Spain, whereupon we may remark the following coincidences:—
The name Loys[36] de Bourbon contains 13 letters; so does the name Anne
d'Austriche.
[36] Up to Louis XIII. all the kings of this name spelled
Louis as Loys.
Louis was 13 years old when this marriage was decided on; Anne was the
same age.
He was the thirteenth king of France bearing the name of Louis, and she
was the thirteenth infanta of the name of Anne of Austria.
On the 23d April, 1616, died Shakspeare: on the same day of the same
month, in the same year, died the great poet Cervantes.
On the 29th May, 1630, King Charles II. was born.
On the 29th May, 1660, he was restored.
On the 29th May, 1672, the fleet was beaten by the Dutch.
On the 29th May, 1679, the rebellion of the Covenanters broke out in
Scotland.
The Emperor Charles V. was born on February 24, 1500; on that day he won
the battle of Pavia, in 1525, and on the same day was crowned in 1530.
On the 29th January, 1697, M. de Broquemar, president of the Parliament of
Paris, died suddenly in that city; next day his brother, an officer, died
suddenly at Bergue, where he was governor. The lives of these brothers
present remarkable coincidences. One day the officer, being engaged in
battle, was wounded in his leg by a sword-blow. On the same day, at the same
moment, the president was afflicted with acute pain, which attacked him
suddenly in the same leg as that of his brother which had been injured.
John Aubrey mentions the case of a friend of his who was born on the 15th
November; his eldest son was born on the 15th November; and his second son's
first son on the same day of the same month.
At the hour of prime, April 6, 1327, Petrarch first saw his mistress
Laura, in the Church of St. Clara in Avignon. In the same city, same month,
same hour, 1348, she died.
The deputation charged with offering the crown of Greece to Prince Otho,
arrived in Munich on the 13th October, 1832; and it was on the 13th October,
1862, that King Otho left Athens, to return to it no more.
On the 21st April, 1770, Louis XVI. was married at Vienna, by the sending
of the ring.
On the 21st June, in the same year, took place the fatal festivities of
his marriage.
On the 21st January, 1781, was the fête at the Hôtel de Ville, for
the birth of the Dauphin.
On the 21st June, 1791, took place the flight to Varennes.
On the 21st January, 1793, he died on the scaffold.
There is said to be a tradition of Norman-monkish origin, that the number
3 is stamped on the Royal line of England, so that there shall not be more
than three princes in succession without a revolution.
William I., William II., Henry I.; then followed the revolution of
Stephen.
Henry II., Richard I., John; invasion of Louis, Dauphin of France, who
claimed the throne.
Henry III., Edward I., Edward II., who was dethroned and put to death.
Edward III., Richard II., who was dethroned.
Henry IV., Henry V., Henry VI.; the crown passed to the house of York.
Edward IV., Edward V., Richard III.; the crown claimed and won by Henry
Tudor.
Henry VII., Henry VIII., Edward VI.; usurpation of Lady Jane Grey.
Mary I., Elizabeth; the crown passed to the house of Stuart.
James I., Charles I.; Revolution.
Charles II., James II.; invasion of William of Orange.
William of Orange and Mary II., Anne; arrival of the house of
Brunswick.
George I., George II., George III., George IV., William IV., Victoria. The
law has proved faulty in the last case; but certainly there was a crisis in
the reign of George IV.
As I am on the subject of the English princes, I will add another singular
coincidence, though it has nothing to do with the fatality of numbers.
It is that Saturday has been a day of ill omen to the later kings.
William of Orange died Saturday, 18th March, 1702.
Anne died Saturday, 1st August, 1704.
George I. died Saturday, 10th June, 1727.
George II. died Saturday, 25th October, 1760.
George III. died Saturday, 30th January, 1820.
George IV. died Saturday, 26th June, 1830.
XII. — THE TERRESTRIAL PARADISE
THE exact position of Eden, and its present condition, do
not seem to have occupied the minds of our Anglo-Saxon ancestors, nor to have
given rise among them to wild speculations.
The map of the tenth century in the British Museum, accompanying the
Periegesis of Priscian, is far more correct than the generality of maps which
we find in MSS. at a later period; and Paradise does not occupy the place of
Cochin China, or the isles of Japan, as it did later, after that the fabulous
voyage of St. Brandan had become popular in the eleventh century.[37] The
site, however, had been already indicated by Cosmas, who wrote in the seventh
century, and had been specified by him as occupying a continent east of
China, beyond the ocean, and still watered by the four great rivers Pison,
Gihon, Hiddekel, and Euphrates, which sprang from subterranean canals. In a
map of the ninth century, preserved in the Strasbourg library, the
terrestrial Paradise is, however, on the Continent, placed at the extreme
east of Asia; in fact, is situated in the Celestial Empire. It occupies the
same position in a Turin MS., and also in a map accompanying a commentary on
the Apocalypse in the British Museum.
[37] St. Brandan was an Irish monk, living at the close
of the sixth century; he founded the Monastery of Clonfert, and is
commemorated on May 16. His voyage seems to be founded on that of Sinbad, and
is full of absurdities. It has been republished by M. Jubinal from MSS. in
the Bibliothèque du Roi, Paris, 8vo. 1836; the earliest printed English
edition is that of Wynkyn de Worde, London, 1516.
According to the fictitious letter of Prester John to the Emperor Emanuel
Comnenus, Paradise was situated close to—within three days' journey
of—his own territories, but where those territories were, is not
distinctly specified.
"The River Indus, which issues out of Paradise," writes the mythical king,
﹃flows among the plains, through a certain province, and it expands,
embracing the whole province with its various windings: there are found
emeralds, sapphires, carbuncles, topazes, chrysolites, onyx, beryl, sardius,
and many other precious stones. There too grows the plant called Asbetos.﹄A
wonderful fountain, moreover, breaks out at the roots of Olympus, a mountain
in Prester John's domain, and﹃from hour to hour, and day by day, the taste
of this fountain varies; and its source is hardly three days' journey from
Paradise, from which Adam was expelled. If any man drinks thrice of this
spring, he will from that day feel no infirmity, and he will, as long as he
lives, appear of the age of thirty.﹄This Olympus is a corruption of Alumbo,
which is no other than Columbo in Ceylon, as is abundantly evident from Sir
John Mandeville's Travels; though this important fountain has escaped the
observation of Sir Emmerson Tennant.
"Toward the heed of that forest (he writes) is the cytee of
Polombe, and above the cytee is a great mountayne, also clept Polombe. And of
that mount, the Cytee hathe his name. And at the foot of that Mount is a fayr
welle and a gret, that hathe odour and savour of all spices; and at every
hour of the day, he chaungethe his odour and his savour dyversely. And whoso
drynkethe 3 times fasting of that watre of that welle, he is hool of alle
maner sykenesse, that he hathe. And thei that duellen there and drynken often
of that welle, thei nevere han sykenesse, and thei semen alle weys yonge. I
have dronken there of 3 of 4 sithes; and zit, methinkethe, I fare the better.
Some men clepen it the Welle of Youthe: for thei that often drynken thereat,
semen alle weys yongly, and lyven withouten sykenesse. And men seyn, that
that welle comethe out of Paradys: and therefore it is so vertuous."
Gautier de Metz, in his poem on the "Image du Monde," written in the
thirteenth century, places the terrestrial Paradise in an unapproachable
region of Asia, surrounded by flames, and having an armed angel to guard the
only gate.
Lambertus Floridus, in a MS. of the twelfth century, preserved in the
Imperial Library in Paris, describes it as﹃Paradisus insula in oceano in
oriente:﹄and in the map accompanying it, Paradise is represented as an
island, a little south-east of Asia, surrounded by rays, and at some distance
from the main land; and in another MS. of the same library,—a mediæval
encyclopædia,—under the word Paradisus is a passage which states that
in the centre of Paradise is a fountain which waters the garden—that in
fact described by Prester John, and that of which story-telling Sir John
Mandeville declared he had "dronken 3 or 4 sithes." Close to this fountain is
the Tree of Life. The temperature of the country is equable; neither frosts
nor burning heats destroy the vegetation. The four rivers already mentioned
rise in it. Paradise is, however, inaccessible to the traveller on account of
the wall of fire which surrounds it.
Paludanus relates in his "Thesaurus Novus," of course on incontrovertible
authority, that Alexander the Great was full of desire to see the terrestrial
Paradise, and that he undertook his wars in the East for the express purpose
of reaching it, and obtaining admission into it. He states that on his
nearing Eden an old man was captured in a ravine by some of Alexander's
soldiers, and they were about to conduct him to their monarch, when the
venerable man said,﹃Go and announce to Alexander that it is in vain he seeks
Paradise; his efforts will be perfectly fruitless; for the way of Paradise is
the way of humility, a way of which he knows nothing. Take this stone and
give it to Alexander, and say to him, 'From this stone learn what you must
think of yourself.'﹄Now, this stone was of great value and excessively
heavy, outweighing and excelling in value all other gems; but when reduced to
powder, it was as light as a tuft of hay, and as worthless. By which token
the mysterious old man meant, that Alexander alive was the greatest of
monarchs, but Alexander dead would be a thing of nought.
That strangest of mediæval preachers, Meffreth, who got into trouble by
denying the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin, in his second sermon
for the Third Sunday in Advent, discusses the locality of the terrestrial
Paradise, and claims St. Basil and St. Ambrose as his authorities for stating
that it is situated on the top of a very lofty mountain in Eastern Asia; so
lofty indeed is the mountain, that the waters of the four rivers fall in
cascade down to a lake at its foot, with such a roar that the natives who
live on the shores of the lake are stone-deaf. Meffreth also explains the
escape of Paradise from submergence at the Deluge, on the same grounds as
does the Master of Sentences (lib. 2, dist. 17, c. 5), by the mountain being
so very high that the waters which rose over Ararat were only able to wash
the base of the mountain of Paradise.
The Hereford map of the thirteenth century represents the terrestrial
Paradise as a circular island near India, cut off from the continent not only
by the sea, but also by a battlemented wall, with a gateway to the west.
Rupert of Duytz regards it as having been situated in Armenia. Radulphus
Highden, in the thirteenth century, relying on the authority of St. Basil and
St. Isidore of Seville, places Eden in an inaccessible region of Oriental
Asia; and this was also the opinion of Philostorgus. Hugo de St. Victor, in
his book "De Situ Terrarum," expresses himself thus: "Paradise is a spot in
the Orient productive of all kind of woods and pomiferous trees. It contains
the Tree of Life: there is neither cold nor heat there, but perpetual equable
temperature. It contains a fountain which flows forth in four rivers."
Rabanus Maurus, with more discretion, says, "Many folk want to make out
that the site of Paradise is in the east of the earth, though cut off by the
longest intervening space of ocean or earth from all regions which man now
inhabits. Consequently, the waters of the Deluge, which covered the highest
points of the surface of our orb, were unable to reach it. However, whether
it be there, or whether it be anywhere else, God knows; but that there
was such a spot once, and that it was on earth, that is certain."
Jacques de Vitry ("Historia Orientalis"), Gervais of Tilbury, in his﹃Otia
Imperalia,﹄and many others, hold the same views, as to the site of Paradise,
that were entertained by Hugo de St. Victor.
Jourdain de Sèverac, monk and traveller in the beginning of the fourteenth
century, places the terrestrial Paradise in the "Third India;" that is to
say, in trans-Gangic India.
Leonardo Dati, a Florentine poet of the fifteenth century, composed a
geographical treatise in verse, entitled "Della Sfera;" and it is in Asia
that he locates the garden:—
"Asia e le prima parte dove l'huomo
Sendo innocente stava in Paradiso."
But perhaps the most remarkable account of the terrestrial Paradise ever
furnished, is that of the﹃Eireks Saga Vídförla,﹄an Icelandic narrative of
the fourteenth century, giving the adventures of a certain Norwegian, named
Eirek, who had vowed, whilst a heathen, that he would explore the fabulous
Deathless Land of pagan Scandinavian mythology. The romance is possibly a
Christian recension of an ancient heathen myth; and Paradise has taken the
place in it of Glœsisvellir.
According to the majority of the MSS. the story purports to be nothing
more than a religious novel; but one audacious copyist has ventured to assert
that it is all fact, and that the details are taken down from the lips of
those who heard them from Eirek himself. The account is briefly
this:—
Eirek was a son of Thrand, king of Drontheim, and having taken upon him a
vow to explore the Deathless Land, he went to Denmark, where he picked up a
friend of the same name as himself. They then went to Constantinople, and
called upon the Emperor, who held a long conversation with them, which is
duly reported, relative to the truths of Christianity and the site of the
Deathless Land, which, he assures them, is nothing more nor less than
Paradise.
"The world," said the monarch, who had not forgotten his geography since
he left school,﹃is precisely 180,000 stages round (about 1,000,000 English
miles), and it is not propped up on posts—not a bit!—it is
supported by the power of God; and the distance between earth and heaven is
100,045 miles (another MS. reads 9382 miles—the difference is
immaterial); and round about the earth is a big sea called Ocean.﹄"And
what's to the south of the earth?" asked Eirek.﹃O! there is the end of the
world, and that is India.﹄"And pray where am I to find the Deathless Land?"
"That lies—Paradise, I suppose, you mean—well, it lies slightly
east of India."
Having obtained this information, the two Eireks started, furnished with
letters from the Greek Emperor.
They traversed Syria, and took ship—probably at Balsora; then,
reaching India, they proceeded on their journey on horseback, till they came
to a dense forest, the gloom of which was so great, through the interlacing
of the boughs, that even by day the stars could be observed twinkling, as
though they were seen from the bottom of a well.
On emerging from the forest, the two Eireks came upon a strait, separating
them from a beautiful land, which was unmistakably Paradise; and the Danish
Eirek, intent on displaying his scriptural knowledge, pronounced the strait
to be the River Pison. This was crossed by a stone bridge, guarded by a
dragon.
The Danish Eirek, deterred by the prospect of an encounter with this
monster, refused to advance, and even endeavored to persuade his friend to
give up the attempt to enter Paradise as hopeless, after that they had come
within sight of the favored land. But the Norseman deliberately walked, sword
in hand, into the maw of the dragon, and next moment, to his infinite
surprise and delight, found himself liberated from the gloom of the monster's
interior, and safely placed in Paradise.
"The land was most beautiful, and the grass as gorgeous as purple; it was
studded with flowers, and was traversed by honey rills. The land was
extensive and level, so that there was not to be seen mountain or hill, and
the sun shone cloudless, without night and darkness; the calm of the air was
great, and there was but a feeble murmur of wind, and that which there was,
breathed redolent with the odor of blossoms." After a short walk, Eirek
observed what certainly must have been a remarkable object, namely, a tower
or steeple self-suspended in the air, without any support whatever, though
access might be had to it by means of a slender ladder. By this Eirek
ascended into a loft of the tower, and found there an excellent cold
collation prepared for him. After having partaken of this he went to sleep,
and in vision beheld and conversed with his guardian angel, who promised to
conduct him back to his fatherland, but to come for him again and fetch him
away from it forever at the expiration of the tenth year after his return to
Dronheim.
Eirek then retraced his steps to India, unmolested by the dragon, which
did not affect any surprise at having to disgorge him, and, indeed, which
seems to have been, notwithstanding his looks, but a harmless and passive
dragon.
After a tedious journey of seven years, Eirek reached his native land,
where he related his adventures, to the confusion of the heathen, and to the
delight and edification of the faithful. "And in the tenth year, and at break
of day, as Eirek went to prayer, God's Spirit caught him away, and he was
never seen again in this world: so here ends all we have to say of
him."[38]
[38] Compare with this the death of Sir Galahad in the
"Morte d'Arthur" of Sir Thomas Malory.
The saga, of which I have given the merest outline, is certainly striking,
and contains some beautiful passages. It follows the commonly-received
opinion which identified Paradise with Ceylon; and, indeed, an earlier
Icelandic work, the "Rymbegla," indicates the locality of the terrestrial
Paradise as being near India, for it speaks of the Ganges as taking its rise
in the mountains of Eden. It is not unlikely that the curious history of
Eirek, if not a Christianized version of a heathen myth, may contain the
tradition of a real expedition to India, by one of the hardy adventurers who
overran Europe, explored the north of Russia, harrowed the shores of Africa,
and discovered America.
Later than the fifteenth century, we find no theories propounded
concerning the terrestrial Paradise, though there are many treatises on the
presumed situation of the ancient Eden. At Madrid was published a poem on the
subject, entitled "Patriana decas," in 1629. In 1662 G. C. Kirchmayer, a
Wittemberg professor, composed a thoughtful dissertation, "De Paradiso,"
which he inserted in his﹃Deliciæ Æstivæ.﹄Fr. Arnoulx wrote a work on
Paradise in 1665, full of the grossest absurdities. In 1666 appeared Carver's
"Discourse on the Terrestrian Paradise." Bochart composed a tract on the
subject; Huet wrote on it also, and his work passed through seven editions,
the last dated from Amsterdam, 1701. The Père Hardouin composed a﹃Nouveau
Traité de la Situation du Paradis Terrestre,﹄La Haye, 1730. An Armenian work
on the rivers of Paradise was translated by M. Saint Marten in 1819; and in
1842 Sir W. Ouseley read a paper on the situation of Eden, before the
Literary Society in London.
THE END
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