(Part of a third Lecture, which was not delivered, but was read to the
Casual Club, _Nov. 1912_)
It used to be a point of honour with me, and I believe with other
members of this Club, never to read up the subject of the evening’s
discussion. So to do would be to deprive the discussions of that
casual character which is their distinctive charm, and which gives
its name to the Club. It is with regret that I have noticed of late
years signs that this honourable understanding is not maintained, and
therefore I have chosen for this paper a title which will have rendered
impracticable any attempt to acquire information of its subject from
outside sources. If any member present has been trying to steal a march
upon the rest by looking up the literature of miraculous signs, adduced
in evidence of the truths of Christianity by the heroes or the victims
of canonisation, I have the pleasure of informing him that he has been
wasting his time; and I may further inform those members who have
made direct inquiries of me as to the scope of the subject indicated
by my title, that my answers, while of course strictly truthful, were
intended to mislead, and have, I trust, served their purpose.
I have here a specimen of a metallic token, which, if any of you have
never seen one, I shall be glad to hand round—I wish I had more, so
that I might present one to each of you as a memento of this joyful
occasion, but the Chancellor of the Exchequer seizes upon every
specimen with such avidity that they are becoming more and more scarce
and difficult to obtain—a metallic token which serves in this country
as the standard of value, and is known as the sovereign or pound
sterling. If you will let observation with extensive view survey it on
both aspects, you will find that on the obverse or the reverse—I never
know which is which—it bears the image, though not the superscription,
of St George of Cappadocia, who has abandoned the more lucrative
occupation of army contractor in order to follow the more honourable
calling of patron saint.
He is engaged, you will observe, in his customary avocation of slaying
the dragon, an operation which he performs in a rather surprising
manner. Chastely attired in a helmet much too large for him, the weight
of which has dislocated his neck, and mounted on a pony many sizes
too small for him, the saint is in the act of kicking the dragon in
the neck with his bare foot, while the pony simultaneously kicks the
animal on the head with his off fore, and treads on its abdomen with
his near hind. The triple assault so confounds the dragon that instead
of biting the leg of the saint or of the pony, both of which are within
easy reach, he retaliates by swearing, which any intelligent dragon
must know would avail little against a Welsh pony (unless indeed the
dragon should swear in Welsh, of which there is no evidence) and would
be quite ineffectual against a saint, especially a saint who had had as
long an experience in the army as St George of Cappadocia.
George of Cappadocia was a commercial man, and a very successful
commercial man, and no doubt it is meet and right and our bounden duty
to place upon the standard of value in this commercial country the
effigy of a successful commercial man. But it is not on account of his
success in commerce that the effigy of George appears on the fronts—or
backs—of our coins. If we wanted to typify upon our coins the highest
development of the commercial spirit, I suppose we should stamp them
with the image of Lord Rothschild, or of Mr Rockefeller; but we do not.
We stamp them with the image of St George of Cappadocia, not because
he was a prosperous and successful commissary, but because, for some
unknown reason, he subsequently became a saint. At some remote time,
I do not know when or why, George was chosen as the patron saint of
this country, and it is because he is the patron saint of England that
his image appears on those useful tokens that are collected with such
avidity by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Mr Rockefeller would not be
eligible, because he is not a saint.
Patron saints were in past times much more highly valued and much more
frequently employed than they are now. France has, or had, a patron
in St Louis. I speak without accurate knowledge, but I believe I am
correct in saying that, in the common phrase, he has joined the ranks
of the unemployed. Scotland placed itself under the patronage of St
Andrew, Ireland of St Patrick, Wales of St David, Spain of St James;
and if I cannot adduce any other examples, it is because these are the
only nations—if we can allow that Scotland is a nation—that remain as
they were before the modern redistribution of the map of Europe.
But nations were not the only things that had patron saints. Every
family that aspired to county rank, and indeed, every person who
aspired to be of consequence, had his or her patron saint. Nor was this
all, as they say in Oxford. Every profession and calling had its patron
saint. The patron saint of medicine was St Luke. Who was the patron
saint of lawyers I do not know, but no doubt they chose a very powerful
one, for their need was great; or perhaps no saint would consent to act
for them, for of all the Inns of Court it is curious that not one is
named after a saint. As to other callings, the sailor-men had a patron
saint in St Botolph, ferrymen in St Christopher, fishermen in St Peter,
shoemakers in St Crispin, butchers in St Bartholomew, huntsmen in St
Hubert and so on. I need not remind you that to this day every church
has its patron saint, but you may not know that every part of the human
body, and every ailment of the human body had its patron saint. The
head was under the patronage of St Ottila; the neck acknowledged St
Blasius; the body, St Lawrence; the legs and feet, St Rochus and St
John; and thereby hangs a curious tale, as we shall see presently.
Except for countries and churches, patron saints are not now much
utilised; but it is evident, from their universal employment in
former times, that they were once of great importance. At the present
day, a patron is a merely ornamental personage. He gives his name,
and he is usually expected to give a subscription, but beyond this,
his only function is to confer respectability. In former times,
however, his functions were much more active. Patron, I may remind
you, is correlative with client, as father with child, or master with
servant. A child necessarily implies a father, and without a father
can no child be. A master implies a servant, and where there is a
servant, there must be a master. And similarly, patron and client
are correlative. There can be no patron without a client, and no
client without a patron. For this reason, I object to and resent the
custom that has recently arisen, of tradesmen calling their customers
clients, especially as in the same breath they ask their customers
for patronage. A master might as well ask his servant for orders, or
a father expect a tip from his child, as a patron ask his client for
patronage.
The relation of patron and client was the relation of protector and
protected. I don’t know whether those who placed themselves under the
patronage of a saint called themselves his clients, but undoubtedly
they invoked and expected his protection; and it was for the sake of
protection that they provided themselves with patron saints. We must
remember that in the days when men provided themselves with patron
saints, no one could afford to be without protection. We have only to
pay attention to the litany to realise how urgent was the need. The
litany is one long prayer for protection. We pray to be protected from
evil and mischief, from the crafts and assaults of the devil, from the
wrath of God, from lightning and tempest, from plague, pestilence and
famine, from battle and murder, and from sudden death. We pray for
protection for all that travel by land or by water, for all prisoners
and captives, for all sick persons (against their doctors I suppose),
and for all sorts and conditions of men.
In those days, the modern conception of the reign of law, in the sense
of the inexorableness of natural causation, had not yet been attained.
Things happened in those days, not in obedience to natural laws, but
according to caprice, and to whether the devil got a chance when God
was not attending, or when the saints, his ministers, were pre-occupied
with other affairs. The Almighty was too august to be approached
directly. Indeed, it seems to have been assumed that he occupied the
position of a constitutional sovereign, and acted only on the advice or
the intercession of his ministers, the saints, so that it was of the
first importance to have the protection and favour of a powerful and
influential saint.
When clans or nations joined battle, their war-cry was the name of
their patron saint, who was expected to fight on the side of his
votaries or clients, to see that they had all the luck and came out top
dog. Not infrequently, the saint came down on purpose, and in bodily
presence led them to the attack. Many such instances are on record, and
it is worth notice that, whoever the saint that thus interpreted his
obligations, he was always mounted on a white horse.
Although wars were very frequent in mediæval times, it would be a
mistake to suppose, as historians before the present generation seemed
to suppose, that the whole time of the whole male population of the
world was occupied in fighting, and in nothing else. No doubt, in times
when there were no newspapers, no novels, no theatres, no cricket, no
football, no suffragists, no divorce court, no kinematographs and no
parliamentary debates, people must have suffered terrible boredom, and
would have been driven now and then to do a little wholesome fighting
from sheer vacancy of mind; and no doubt, when there were no motor
buses, no taxi-cabs and no municipal tram-cars, the normal increase of
population must have required some other check to keep it within the
bounds of the means of subsistence; and so people plunged into war to
save themselves from famine; but still, the laity did not live wholly
on acorns and beech-mast, nor the clergy on Greek roots, and therefore
some industrial occupations must have been followed; and we know as a
matter of fact that some were followed; and whatever a man’s occupation
might be, whether of war or peace, it was necessary, if he was to have
any luck, that he should have a patron saint; and hence it was that a
patron saint presided over every trade and calling. Not even thieving
could prosper except under the patronage of St Nicholas.
My own occupation had not then reached the perfection that it has
now attained, and in those days there were maladies that baffled the
resources of medical art as it then was, and defied all the drugs
in the pharmacopœia, reinforced as that then was by many potent and
valuable remedies that the ignorance and indifference of a later age
has suffered to fall into disuse. Pounded earthworms, ants’ eggs,
asses’ dung, the urine of a bull or—strange alternative—of a virgin,
vipers’ fat, the water that had been used for washing a corpse—all
these, incredible as it appears, sometimes failed to cure; and then
there was no resource left but to go to the celestial Harley Street,
and consult a specialist saint. For the celestial Harley Street had
as many saintly specialists as its mundane successor has now of
specialists who are, perhaps, not altogether saintly. St Apollonius
was the leading authority on toothache; St Avertin appropriated my
own specialty of lunacy; St Benedict practised in stone and other
diseases of the bladder; St Hubert specialised in hydrophobia; St John
in epilepsy; St Vitus in chorea; St Maur in gout; and St Anthony in
erysipelas. Of course, it was not to be expected that everyone should
know the right saint to go to in any particular malady, any more than
the man in the street knows at the present time precisely the best
specialist, who is not a saint, to consult for the malady with which
he may happen to be afflicted. It would have been as absurd to go for
one’s gout to St Apollonius, the President, if one may so put it, of
the celestial College of Dentists, as for the toothache to St Maur,
whose specialty was gout. In cases of difficulty, it was necessary to
consult a priest, as one now consults a general practitioner.
Of course, in those days as in these, the fee had to be considered.
Guineas had not then been coined, and payment was usually made in
candles, burnt at the shrine of the saint, a mode of remuneration that,
for my own part, I am glad to say has been abandoned. This method of
payment was rather after that of the sister profession than of modern
medicine. The saint had a number of candles marked on his brief, as it
were, and unless the retainer was satisfactory, he refused to look
at the papers. No doubt there were needy saints, not too scrupulous,
who would undertake any case for a candle or two, whether they were
qualified to treat it or not; just as now there are sixpenny doctors,
and surgeons who will undertake a case of mental disease; but it is to
be hoped that the leaders of the profession had more conscience, and
that a saint who specialised on blindness, for instance, would no more
undertake a dislocation or a fracture than a Chancery leader would
undertake the defence of a prisoner at the Old Bailey, or a reputable
surgeon would treat a patient suffering from mental disorder.
So far, then, our mediæval ancestors were thoroughly well provided
with patrons. There was scarcely any occasion in life that had not a
saint who had specialised in its requirements and was ready to supply
them for a consideration—for a sufficient number of candles. But it is
evident that such a complete equipment of saints could not have been
suddenly, nor even rapidly constituted. It must have been the growth of
years and of generations; and moreover, we must remember that there was
a time, at the beginning of the Christian era, when, though sins were
very many, saints were very few, and until the large additions made
to the noble army of martyrs in the reign of Diocletian, there could
not possibly have been saints enough to go round; and if we go further
back, and recede from the penumbra of early A.D. to the outer darkness
of B.C., we enter a benighted world in which there were no saints at
all. The prospect appals! We might almost as well contemplate a world
in which there were no barristers. The question presents itself, and
presses upon us with irresistible force—What did our unhappy ancestors
do in a world in which there were no saints? It is clear that patrons
or protectors of some kind they must have had, for in pre-Christian,
no more than in mediæval times, was there any conviction or knowledge
of the operation of natural laws. How do we know this? We have it on
unexceptionable authority. A contemporary writer, who is generally
believed to have been inspired, asserts ‘He hath not dealt so with
any nation, neither have the heathen any knowledge of his laws.’
Consequently, there was the same lack of any rule or governance in
the happening of events. Everything went by chance, according as the
devil or the saints were paying attention, or got the upper hand at the
moment. But there were no saints. Hence it would appear that the devil
must have had it all his own way, and that the affairs of men must have
been uniformly and invariably unfortunate. But they were not, for man
survived. He not only survived, but he prospered and flourished. He
increased and multiplied exceedingly. Men organised themselves into
great nations, built great cities, and were subject to mighty kings.
Egypt, Nineveh, Babylon, Assyria, Persia, the Empire of India and
the greater Empire of China, all attest that, long before there were
saints to interest themselves in him, man succeeded, somehow or other,
in antagonising the devil and getting the better of him. It is of the
utmost interest and importance to discover how he did this, and what
were the means that he employed; and this brings me to the middle of my
song, and the second part of my paper. I am now done with Saints. It
is clear that they were not as indispensable as they made themselves
out; and—I say it with reluctance, but—I have grave doubts whether they
did not lay claim, if not to powers they did not possess, at any rate
to the exclusive possession of powers by no means peculiar to them. We
know, indeed, that on one historical occasion, St Dunstan did seize
the devil by the nose with a pair of tongs; and we are told, on less
unimpeachable authority, but we are told, that St Nicholas kicked him
on a place which is described as being near the spot where the tail
joins on to the small of the back; but with these exceptions, though
he was constantly outwitted, and indeed he appears to be a kind of
Simple Simon, easily gulled by the most transparent device, and no more
astute than the victims of the confidence trick—with these exceptions,
I say, there are few, if any, records of personal encounters with the
devil till we come down to Martin Luther; and Martin Luther was not a
saint. He was never, I understand, canonised, and I am informed on good
authority, in reply to inquiry made in the highest quarters, that any
application to Rome for his canonisation would have little or no chance
of success.
Still, whatever unaccountable prejudices may exist at Rome against the
canonisation of this great and good man, I cannot see that we are any
nearer a solution of the most important, and indeed vital question,
What did men do for patrons before they had saints to fly to? This,
gentlemen, is the great and epoch-making discovery that I have to
announce to you on this memorable evening. This is the brilliant result
of years of laborious research. This is the golden fruit of a lifetime
of very insufficiently rewarded toil. Why should I repine that the
paltry metal counters that I exhibited at the beginning of this address
are so scarce and rare, when I have garnered so abundantly rewards so
much more precious? What did men do for patronage and protection before
they had saints to place themselves under? Why, this was what they did.
Not to keep you in suspense any longer, I will at once reveal that they
sought the protection of the Signs of the Zodiac and of the Planets;
and as far as it is possible to judge, the protection they obtained
therefrom was as ample, as efficient, and as abundant, as that of all
the saints in the calendar.
Many centuries before a single saint had been canonised, the system
of patronage by the heavenly bodies was completely organised—was, if
I may so put it, in full swing; and all the Christian hagiology did
was to adopt this system, ousting the heavenly bodies, and filling
their places with saints. Long before St Louis, or St Andrew, or
that successful commissary St George, was born or thought of, every
nation and city of antiquity had its patron Sign. Every calling had
its own patron Sign or Planet; every part of the body its patron Sign
or Planet: and every illness had a double process of cure, being
remediable not only by certain drugs, but according to the position
and movement of the Planets among the Signs when the drugs were
collected and when they were administered. The series of saints and
the series of Signs present a complete parallel, and it is evident
that in this as in other things Christianity took advantage of a
pre-existing organisation and adapted it to its own uses. It took
the institution of patronage by celestial personages, as it took the
institution of periodical festivals; emptied them of their previous
contents, and filled them with Christian matter, leaving the pagan form
unaltered. Thus it took the great annual winter festival, and altered
it arbitrarily to Christmas day, pretending that it is the anniversary
of the birth of Christ, for which there is not one tittle of evidence;
but it could not, or did not, alter the minor weekly festival which
still has its name from the greatest of the Planets. In these cases the
supersession was either complete or none at all, but in other matters,
and especially in the matter of patronage and protection, the struggle
was very prolonged, and for ages the two systems of patronage existed
side by side; and alongside the priests, who were experts in advising
as to the appropriate saint to invoke, were the astrologers, experts in
advising the proper conjunction or disposition of the heavenly bodies
to wait for before beginning any undertaking or altering any course
of action, and also for the purpose of determining whether a course
of action was or was not judicious, and calculated to be successful.
Between the two sets of practitioners there was a natural jealousy.
The Church forbad recourse being had to the aid of Astrology, and
threatened excommunication to anyone who consulted the rival expert,
just as at present the orthodox physician boycotts the homœopath. On
the other hand the astrologer, who was often an infidel, often a Jew or
an Arab, despised and ridiculed the pretensions of the saints. Whatever
faith, or want of faith, either sect had in its own ministrations,
neither was without an uneasy feeling that the other might, after all,
have something in it. The astrologers were not above invoking the aid
of the saints in their own personal difficulties, and the very Popes
who issued bulls fulminating against Astrology and its practitioners,
yet kept their own private astrologers, whom they consulted on the
sly. In spite of their mutual antagonism, however, the two systems
existed side by side for many centuries, and neither can boast of a
complete triumph over the other. Astrology is dead, it is true, but in
Protestant countries the invocation of saints perished long before its
rival, and the influence of the heavenly bodies was consulted by very
many who would have scorned to invoke a saint.
Very many days in the year had their patron saints, and those who are
familiar with old chronicles know that the date of an event was never
signalised by the day of the month, but always by the saint’s day
that it fell upon, or, in the few cases in which the day had not been
appropriated by some saint or other, the date was signalised as being
on the eve of the day following, which was sure to have its patron
saint, or the morrow of the previous day. Correspondingly, every day of
the week had its patron Planet. The number seven was chosen for the
days of the week, no doubt because in seven days the moon completes
a quarter, and in 28 days completes its revolution. By a curious
coincidence, the number of Planets known to the ancient world was also
seven, and hence it was natural that to every Planet should be assigned
one day in the week. By an easy transition, made at a time that I have
not been able to identify, but that was certainly very early, the
powers of the Planets and those of the gods became transferable, and
with the powers the names, so that only three of the seven days of the
week, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, are known by the names of Planets,
the remaining four being called after the corresponding gods.
As with days, so with other things. We have seen that to some saint or
other every part of the body was apportioned; and similarly the body
was carved up and portioned out among the Signs of the Zodiac, as we
find in the chapter of Arnaldus de Villanova, _De quolibet signo quod
membrum in corpore respicit_, and as is set forth in the first lecture
in this book, so that it is clear that the heathen had as good a choice
of celestial specialists as ever the Christians had.
Time fails me to carry out the parallel in further detail, but just as
the patron Sign of England is St George, and the effigy of St George
appears upon our coins, so the patron Sign of Syria was Aries, and
the effigy of the Ram appears on Syrian coins. Similarly, Palmyra was
under the patronage of Libra, and on the coins of Palmyra appears the
Balance. Similarly, individuals had their patron Signs before ever they
had their patron saints. The patron Sign of Augustus was Capricorn,
of Pythodeia Queen of Pontus, the Balance. The custom continued well
into mediæval times and into Christian countries, and King Stephen of
England adopted and placed on his coins the patron Sign of Sagittarius.