Most effective in bringing out the truth were such works as those of Sir

John Lubbock and Tylor; and so conclusive were they that the arguments

of Whately were given up as untenable by the other of the two great

champions above referred to, and an attempt was made by him to form the

diminishing number of thinking men supporting the old theological view

on a new line of defence.

This second champion, the Duke of Argyll, was a man of wide knowledge

and strong powers in debate, whose high moral sense was amply shown in

his adhesion to the side of the American Union in the struggle against

disunion and slavery, despite the overwhelming majority against him in

the high aristocracy to which he belonged. As an honest man and close

thinker, the duke was obliged to give up completely the theological view

of the antiquity of man. The whole biblical chronology as held by the

universal Church, "always, everywhere, and by all," he sacrificed, and

gave all his powers in this field to support the theory of "the Fall."

Noblesse oblige: the duke and his ancestors had been for centuries the

chief pillars of the Church of Scotland, and it was too much to expect

that he could break away from a tenet which forms really its "chief

cornerstone."

Acknowledging the insufficiency of Archbishop Whately's argument, the

duke took the ground that the lower, barbarous, savage, brutal

races were the remains of civilized races which, in the struggle for

existence, had been pushed and driven off to remote and inclement parts

of the earth, where the conditions necessary to a continuance in their

early civilization were absent; that, therefore, the descendants of

primeval, civilized men degenerated and sank in the scale of culture. To

use his own words, the weaker races were "driven by the stronger to the

woods and rocks," so that they became "mere outcasts of the human race."

In answer to this, while it was conceded, first, that there have been

examples of weaker tribes sinking in the scale of culture after escaping

from the stronger into regions unfavourable to civilization, and,

secondly, that many powerful nations have declined and decayed, it was

shown that the men in the most remote and unfavourable regions have not

always been the lowest in the scale; that men have been frequently found

"among the woods and rocks" in a higher state of civilization than on

the fertile plains, such examples being cited as Mexico, Peru, and even

Scotland; and that, while there were many examples of special and local

decline, overwhelming masses of facts point to progress as a rule.

The improbability, not to say impossibility, of many of the conclusions

arrived at by the duke appeared more and more strongly as more became

known of the lower tribes of mankind. It was necessary on his theory

to suppose many things which our knowledge of the human race absolutely

forbids us to believe: for example, it was necessary to suppose that

the Australians or New Zealanders, having once possessed so simple and

convenient an art as that of the potter, had lost every trace of it; and

that the same tribes, having once had so simple a means of saving labour

as the spindle or small stick weighted at one end for spinning, had

given it up and gone back to twisting threads with the hand. In fact,

it was necessary to suppose that one of the main occupations of man from

"the beginning" had been the forgetting of simple methods, processes,

and implements which all experience in the actual world teaches us are

never entirely forgotten by peoples who have once acquired them.

Some leading arguments of the duke were overthrown by simple statements

of fact. Thus, his instance of the Eskimo as pushed to the verge

of habitable America, and therefore living in the lowest depths of

savagery, which, even if it were true, by no means proved a general

rule, was deprived of its force by the simple fact that the Eskimos are

by no means the lowest race on the American continent, and that various

tribes far more centrally and advantageously placed, as, for instance,

those in Brazil, are really inferior to them in the scale of culture.

Again, his statement that "in Africa there appear to be no traces of any

time when the natives were not acquainted with the use of iron," is met

by the fact that from the Nile Valley to the Cape of Good Hope we find,

wherever examination has been made, the same early stone implements

which in all other parts of the world precede the use of iron, some of

which would not have been made had their makers possessed iron. The

duke also tried to show that there were no distinctive epochs of stone,

bronze, and iron, by adducing the fact that some stone implements are

found even in some high civilizations. This is indeed a fact. We find

some few European peasants to-day using stone mallet-heads; but

this proves simply that the old stone mallet-heads have survived as

implements cheap and effective.

The argument from Comparative Ethnology in support of the view that the

tendency of mankind is upward has received strength from many sources.

Comparative Philology shows that in the less civilized, barbarous, and

savage races childish forms of speech prevail--frequent reduplications

and the like, of which we have survivals in the later and even in the

most highly developed languages. In various languages, too, we find

relics of ancient modes of thought in the simplest words and expressions

used for arithmetical calculations. Words and phrases for this purpose

are frequently found to be derived from the words for hands, feet,

fingers, and toes, just as clearly as in our own language some of

our simplest measures of length are shown by their names to have been

measures of parts of the human body, as the cubit, the foot, and the

like, and therefore to date from a time when exactness was not required.

To add another out of many examples, it is found to-day that various

rude nations go through the simplest arithmetical processes by means

of pebbles. Into our own language, through the Latin, has come a word

showing that our distant progenitors reckoned in this way: the word

CALCULATE gives us an absolute proof of this. According to the theory

of the Duke of Argyll, men ages ago used pebbles (CALCULI) in performing

the simplest arithmetical calculations because we to-day "CALCULATE." No

reduction to absurdity could be more thorough. The simple fact must be

that we "calculate" because our remote ancestors used pebbles in their

arithmetic.

Comparative Literature and Folklore also show among peoples of a low

culture to-day childish modes of viewing nature, and childish ways of

expressing the relations of man to nature, such as clearly survive from

a remote ancestry; noteworthy among these are the beliefs in witches and

fairies, and multitudes of popular and poetic expressions in the most

civilized nations.

So, too, Comparative Ethnography, the basis of Ethnology, shows in

contemporary barbarians and savages a childish love of playthings and

games, of which we have many survivals.

All these facts, which were at first unobserved or observed as matters

of no significance, have been brought into connection with a fact in

biology acknowledged alike by all important schools; by Agassiz on one

hand and by Darwin on the other--namely, as stated by Agassiz, that "the

young states of each species and group resemble older forms of the same

group," or, as stated by Darwin, that "in two or more groups of animals,

however much they may at first differ from each other in structure and

habits, if they pass through closely similar embryonic stages, we may

feel almost assured that they have descended from the same parent form,

and are therefore closely related."(194)

(194) For the stone forms given to early bronze axes, etc., see

Nilsson, Primitive Inhabitants of Scandanavia, London, 1868, Lubbock's

Introduction, p. 31; and for plates, see Lubbock's Prehistoric Man,

chap. ii; also Cartailhac, Les Ages Prehistoriques de l'Espagne et du

Portugal, p. 227. Also Keller, Lake Dwellings; also Troyon, Habitations

Lacustres; also Boyd Dawkins, Early Man in Great Britain, p. 191; also

Lubbock, p. 6; also Lyell, Antiquity of Man,chap. ii. For the cranogs,

etc., in the north of Europe, see Munro, Ancient Scottish Lake

Dwellings, Edinburgh, 1882. For mounds and greater stone constructions

in the extreme south of Europe, see Cartailhac's work on Spain and

Portugal above cited, part iii, chap. iii. For the source of Mr.

Southall's contention, see Brugsch, Egypt of the Pharoahs. For the two

sides of the question whether in the lower grades of savagery there is

really any recognition of a superior power, or anything which can

be called, in any accepted sense, religion, compare Quatrefages with

Lubbock, in works already cited. For a striking but rather ad captandum

effort to show that there is a moral and religious sense in the very

lowest of Australian tribes, see one of the discourses of Archbishop

Vaughn on Science and Religion, Baltimore, 1879. For one out of

multitiudes of striking and instructive resemblances in ancient

stone implements and those now in use among sundry savage tribes,

see comparison between old Scandanavian arrowheads and those recently

brought from Tierra del Fuego, in Nilsson, as above, especially in Plate

V. For a brief and admirable statement of the arguments on both sides,

see Sir J. Lubbock's Dundee paper, given in the appendix to the American

edition of his Origin of Civilization, etc. For the general argument

referred to between Whately and the Duke of Argyll on one side, and

Lubbock on the other, see Lubbock's Dundee paper as above cited; Tylor,

Early History of Mankind, especially p. 193; and the Duke of Argyll,

Primeval Man, part iv. For difficulties of savages in arithmetic, see

Lubbock, as above, pp. 459 et seq. For a very temperate and judicial

view of the whole question, see Tylor as above, chaps. vii and xiii. For

a brief summary of the scientific position regarding the stagnation

and deterioration of races, resulting in the statement that such

deterioration "in no way contradicts the theory that civilization itself

is developed from low to high stages," see Tylor, Anthropology, chap. i.

For striking examples of the testimony of language to upward progress,

see Tylor, chap. xii.

CHAPTER X. THE "FALL OF MAN" AND HISTORY.

The history of art, especially as shown by architecture, in the noblest

monuments of the most enlightened nations of antiquity; gives abundant

proofs of the upward tendency of man from the rudest and simplest

beginnings. Many columns of early Egyptian temples or tombs are but

bundles of Nile reeds slightly conventionalized in stone; the temples of

Greece, including not only the earliest forms, but the Parthenon

itself, while in parts showing an evolution out of Egyptian and Assyrian

architecture, exhibit frequent reminiscences and even imitations of

earlier constructions in wood; the medieval cathedrals, while evolved

out of Roman and Byzantine structures, constantly show unmistakable

survivals of prehistoric construction. (195)

(195) As to evolution in architecture, and especially of Greek forms

and ornaments out of Egyptian and Assyrian, with survivals in stone

architecture of forms obtained in Egypt when reeds were used, and in

Greece when wood construction prevailed, see Fergusson's Handbook of

Architecture, vol. i, pp. 100, 228, 233, and elsewhere; also Otfried

Muller, Ancient Art and its Remains, English translation, London,

1852, pp. 219, passim. For a very brief but thorough statement, see A.

Magnard's paper in the Proceedings of the American Oriental Society,

October, 1889, entitled Reminiscences of Egypt in Doric Architecture.

On the general subject, see Hommel, Babylonien, ch. i, and Meyer,

Alterthum, i, S 199.

So, too, general history has come in, illustrating the unknown from

the known: the development of man in the prehistoric period from his

development within historic times. Nothing is more evident from history

than the fact that weaker bodies of men driven out by stronger do not

necessarily relapse into barbarism, but frequently rise, even under the

most unfavourable circumstances, to a civilization equal or superior

to that from which they have been banished. Out of very many examples

showing this law of upward development, a few may be taken as typical.

The Slavs, who sank so low under the pressure of stronger races that

they gave the modern world a new word to express the most hopeless

servitude, have developed powerful civilizations peculiar to themselves;

the barbarian tribes who ages ago took refuge amid the sand-banks and

morasses of Holland, have developed one of the world's leading centres

of civilization; the wretched peasants who about the fifth century took

refuge from invading hordes among the lagoons and mud banks of Venetia,

developed a power in art, arms, and politics which is among the wonders

of human history; the Puritans, driven from the civilization of Great

Britain to the unfavourable climate, soil, and circumstances of early

New England,--the Huguenots, driven from France, a country admirably

fitted for the highest growth of civilization, to various countries

far less fitted for such growth,--the Irish peasantry, driven in vast

numbers from their own island to other parts of the world on the whole

less fitted to them--all are proofs that, as a rule, bodies of men once

enlightened, when driven to unfavourable climates and brought under the

most depressing circumstances, not only retain what enlightenment they

have, but go on increasing it. Besides these, we have such cases as

those of criminals banished to various penal colonies, from whose

descendants has been developed a better morality; and of pirates, like

those of the Bounty, whose descendants, in a remote Pacific island,

became sober, steady citizens. Thousands of examples show the prevalence

of this same rule--that men in masses do not forget the main gains of

their civilization, and that, in spite of deteriorations, their tendency

is upward.

Another class of historic facts also testifies in the most striking

manner to this same upward tendency: the decline and destruction

of various civilizations brilliant but hopelessly vitiated. These

catastrophes are seen more and more to be but steps in, this

development. The crumbling away of the great ancient civilizations based

upon despotism, whether the despotism of monarch, priest, or mob--the

decline and fall of Roman civilization, for example, which, in his most

remarkable generalization, Guizot has shown to have been necessary

to the development of the richer civilization of modern Europe; the

terrible struggle and loss of the Crusades, which once appeared to be a

mere catastrophe, but are now seen to have brought in, with the downfall

of feudalism, the beginnings of the centralizing, civilizing monarchical

period; the French Revolution, once thought a mere outburst of diabolic

passion, but now seen to be an unduly delayed transition from the

monarchical to the constitutional epoch: all show that even widespread

deterioration and decline--often, indeed, the greatest political and

moral catastrophes--so far from leading to a fall of mankind, tend in

the long run to raise humanity to higher planes.

Thus, then, Anthropology and its handmaids, Ethnology, Philology,

and History, have wrought out, beyond a doubt, proofs of the upward

evolution of humanity since the appearance of man upon our planet.

Nor have these researches been confined to progress in man's material

condition. Far more important evidences have been found of upward

evolution in his family, social, moral, intellectual, and religious

relations. The light thrown on this subject by such men as Lubbock,

Tylor, Herbert Spencer, Buckle, Draper, Max Muller, and a multitude of

others, despite mistakes, haltings, stumblings, and occasional following

of delusive paths, is among the greatest glories of the century now

ending. From all these investigators in their various fields, holding

no brief for any system sacred or secular, but seeking truth as truth,

comes the same general testimony of the evolution of higher out of

lower. The process has been indeed slow and painful, but this does not

prove that it may not become more rapid and less fruitful in sorrow as

humanity goes on.(196)

(196) As to the good effects of migration, see Waitz, Introduction to

Anthropology, London, 1863, p. 345.

While, then, it is not denied that many instances of retrogression can

be found, the consenting voice of unbiased investigators in all lands

has declared more and more that the beginnings of our race must have

been low and brutal, and that the tendency has been upward. To combat

this conclusion by examples of decline and deterioration here and

there has become impossible: as well try to prove that, because in the

Mississippi there are eddies in which the currents flow northward, there

is no main stream flowing southward; or that, because trees decay and

fall, there is no law of upward growth from germ to trunk, branches,

foliage, and fruit.

A very striking evidence that the theological theory had become

untenable was seen when its main supporter in the scientific field,

Von Martius, in the full ripeness of his powers, publicly declared his

conversion to the scientific view.

Yet, while the tendency of enlightened human thought in recent times is

unmistakable, the struggle against the older view is not yet ended. The

bitterness of the Abbe Hamard in France has been carried to similar

and even greater extremes among sundry Protestant bodies in Europe and

America. The simple truth of history mates it a necessity, unpleasant

though it be, to chronicle two typical examples in the United States.

In the year 1875 a leader in American industrial enterprise endowed at

the capital of a Southern State a university which bore his name. It was

given into the hands of one of the religious sects most powerful in that

region, and a bishop of that sect became its president. To its chair

of Geology was called Alexander Winchell, a scholar who had already

won eminence as a teacher and writer in that field, a professor greatly

beloved and respected in the two universities with which he had been

connected, and a member of the sect which the institution of learning

above referred to represented.

But his relations to this Southern institution were destined to be

brief. That his lectures at the Vanderbilt University were learned,

attractive, and stimulating, even his enemies were forced to admit; but

he was soon found to believe that there had been men earlier than the

period as signed to Adam, and even that all the human race are not

descended from Adam. His desire was to reconcile science and Scripture,

and he was now treated by a Methodist Episcopal Bishop in Tennessee just

as, two centuries before, La Peyrere had been treated, for a similar

effort, by a Roman Catholic vicar-general in Belgium. The publication of

a series of articles on the subject, contributed by the professor to a

Northern religious newspaper at its own request, brought matters to a

climax; for, the articles having fallen under the notice of a leading

Southwestern organ of the denomination controlling the Vanderbilt

University, the result was a most bitter denunciation of Prof. Winchell

and of his views. Shortly afterward the professor was told by Bishop

McTyeire that "our people are of the opinion that such views are

contrary to the plan of redemption," and was requested by the bishop to

quietly resign his chair. To this the professor made the fitting reply:

"If the board of trustees have the manliness to dismiss me for cause,

and declare the cause, I prefer that they should do it. No power on

earth could persuade me to resign."

"We do not propose," said the bishop, with quite gratuitous

suggestiveness, "to treat you as the Inquisition treated Galileo."

"But what you propose is the same thing," rejoined Dr. Winchell. "It

is ecclesiastical proscription for an opinion which must be settled by

scientific evidence."

Twenty-four hours later Dr. Winchell was informed that his chair had

been abolished, and its duties, with its salary, added to those of a

colleague; the public were given to understand that the reasons

were purely economic; the banished scholar was heaped with official

compliments, evidently in hope that he would keep silence.

Such was not Dr. Winchell's view. In a frank letter to the leading

journal of the university town he stated the whole matter. The

intolerance-hating press of the country, religious and secular, did not

hold its peace. In vain the authorities of the university waited for

the storm to blow over. It was evident, at last, that a defence must

be made, and a local organ of the sect, which under the editorship of

a fellow-professor had always treated Dr. Winchell's views with the

luminous inaccuracy which usually characterizes a professor's ideas of a

rival's teachings, assumed the task. In the articles which followed,

the usual scientific hypotheses as to the creation were declared to be

"absurd," "vague and unintelligible," "preposterous and gratuitous."

This new champion stated that "the objections drawn from the

fossiliferous strata and the like are met by reference to the analogy of

Adam and Eve, who presented the phenomena of adults when they were but a

day old, and by the Flood of Noah and other cataclysms, which, with the

constant change of Nature, are sufficient to account for the phenomena

in question"!

Under inspiration of this sort the Tennessee Conference of the religious

body in control of the university had already, in October, 1878, given

utterance to its opinion of unsanctified science as follows: "This is

an age in which scientific atheism, having divested itself of the

habiliments that most adorn and dignify humanity, walks abroad in

shameless denudation. The arrogant and impertinent claims of this

'science, falsely so called,' have been so boisterous and persistent,

that the unthinking mass have been sadly deluded; but our university

alone has had the courage to lay its young but vigorous hand upon the

mane of untamed Speculation and say, 'We will have no more of this.'" It

is a consolation to know how the result, thus devoutly sought, has been

achieved; for in the "ode" sung at the laying of the corner-stone of a

new theological building of the same university, in May, 1880, we read:

"Science and Revelation here In perfect harmony appear, Guiding young

feet along the road Through grace and Nature up to God."

It is also pleasing to know that, while an institution calling itself

a university thus violated the fundamental principles on which any

institution worthy of the name must be based, another institution which

has the glory of being the first in the entire North to begin

something like a university organization--the State University of

Michigan--recalled Dr. Winchell at once to his former professorship, and

honoured itself by maintaining him in that position, where, unhampered,

he was thereafter able to utter his views in the midst of the largest

body of students on the American Continent.

Disgraceful as this history was to the men who drove out Dr. Winchell,

they but succeeded, as various similar bodies of men making similar

efforts have done, in advancing their supposed victim to higher position

and more commanding influence.(197)

(197) For Dr. Winchell's original statements, see Adamites and

Pre-Adamites, Syracuse, N. Y., 1878. For the first important

denunciation of his views, see the St. Louis Christian Advocate, May 22,

1878. For the conversation with Bishop McTyeire, see Dr. Winchell's

own account in the Nashville American of July 19, 1878. For the further

course of the attack in the denominational organ of Dr. Winchell's

oppressors, see the Nashville Christian Advocate, April 26, 1879. For

the oratorical declaration of the Tennessee Conference upon the

matter, see the Nashville American, October 15, 1878; and for the "ode"

regarding the "harmony of science and revelation" as supported at the

university, see the same journal for May 2, 1880

A few years after this suppression of earnest Christian thought at an

institution of learning in the western part of our Southern States,

there appeared a similar attempt in sundry seaboard States of the South.

As far back as the year 1857 the Presbyterian Synod of Mississippi

passed the following resolution:

"WHEREAS, We live in an age in which the most insidious attacks are made

on revealed religion through the natural sciences, and as it behooves

the Church at all times to have men capable of defending the faith once

delivered to the saints;

"RESOLVED, That this presbytery recommend the endowment of a

professorship of Natural Science as connected with revealed religion in

one or more of our theological seminaries."

Pursuant to this resolution such a chair was established in the

theological seminary at Columbia, S.C., and James Woodrow was appointed

professor. Dr. Woodrow seems to have been admirably fitted for the

position--a devoted Christian man, accepting the Presbyterian standards

of faith in which he had been brought up, and at the same time giving

every effort to acquaint himself with the methods and conclusions of

science. To great natural endowments he added constant labours to arrive

at the truth in this field. Visiting Europe, he made the acquaintance

of many of the foremost scientific investigators, became a student

in university lecture rooms and laboratories, an interested hearer in

scientific conventions, and a correspondent of leading men of science

at home and abroad. As a result, he came to the conclusion that the

hypothesis of evolution is the only one which explains various leading

facts in natural science. This he taught, and he also taught that such a

view is not incompatible with a true view of the sacred Scriptures.

In 1882 and 1883 the board of directors of the theological seminary,

in fear that "scepticism in the world is using alleged discoveries in

science to impugn the Word of God," requested Prof. Woodrow to state his

views in regard to evolution. The professor complied with this request

in a very powerful address, which was published and widely circulated,

to such effect that the board of directors shortly afterward passed

resolutions declaring the theory of evolution as defined by Prof.

Woodrow not inconsistent with perfect soundness in the faith.

In the year 1884 alarm regarding Dr. Woodrow's teachings began to show

itself in larger proportions, and a minority report was introduced into

the Synod of South Carolina declaring that "the synod is called upon

to decide not upon the question whether the said views of Dr. Woodrow

contradict the Bible in its highest and absolute sense, but upon the

question whether they contradict the interpretation of the Bible by the

Presbyterian Church in the United States."

Perhaps a more self-condemnatory statement was never presented, for

it clearly recognized, as a basis for intolerance, at least a possible

difference between "the interpretation of the Bible by the Presbyterian

Church" and the teachings of "the Bible in its highest and absolute

sense."

This hostile movement became so strong that, in spite of the favourable

action of the directors of the seminary, and against the efforts of

a broad-minded minority in the representative bodies having ultimate

charge of the institution, the delegates from the various synods raised

a storm of orthodoxy and drove Dr. Woodrow from his post. Happily, he

was at the same time professor in the University of South Carolina in

the same city of Columbia, and from his chair in that institution

he continued to teach natural science with the approval of the great

majority of thinking men in that region; hence, the only effect of the

attempt to crush him was, that his position was made higher, respect for

him deeper, and his reputation wider.

In spite of attempts by the more orthodox to prevent students of the

theological seminary from attending his lectures at the university, they

persisted in hearing him; indeed, the reputation of heresy seemed to

enhance his influence.

It should be borne in mind that the professor thus treated had been one

of the most respected and beloved university instructors in the South

during more than a quarter of a century, and that he was turned out

of his position with no opportunity for careful defence, and, indeed,

without even the formality of a trial. Well did an eminent but

thoughtful divine of the Southern Presbyterian Church declare that "the

method of procedure to destroy evolution by the majority in the Church

is vicious and suicidal," and that "logical dynamite has been used to

put out a supposed fire in the upper stories of our house, and all the

family in the house at that." Wisely, too, did he refer to the majority

as "sowing in the fields of the Church the thorns of its errors, and

cumbering its path with the debris and ruin of its own folly."

To these recent cases may be added the expulsion of Prof. Toy from

teaching under ecclesiastical control at Louisville, and his election to

a far more influential chair at Harvard University; the driving out from

the American College at Beyrout of the young professors who accepted

evolution as probable, and the rise of one of them, Mr. Nimr, to a far

more commanding position than that which he left--the control of three

leading journals at Cairo; the driving out of Robertson Smith from his

position at Edinburgh, and his reception into the far more important and

influential professorship at the English University of Cambridge; and

multitudes of similar cases. From the days when Henry Dunster, the first

President of Harvard College, was driven from his presidency, as Cotton

Mather said, for "falling into the briers of Antipedobaptism" until

now, the same spirit is shown in all such attempts. In each we have

generally, on one side, a body of older theologians, who since their

youth have learned nothing and forgotten nothing, sundry professors

who do not wish to rewrite their lectures, and a mass of unthinking

ecclesiastical persons of little or no importance save in making up a

retrograde majority in an ecclesiastical tribunal; on the other side

we have as generally the thinking, open-minded, devoted men who have

listened to the revelation of their own time as well as of times past,

and who are evidently thinking the future thought of the world.

Here we have survivals of that same oppression of thought by theology

which has cost the modern world so dear; the system which forced great

numbers of professors, under penalty of deprivation, to teach that the

sun and planets revolve about the earth; that comets are fire-balls

flung by an angry God at a wicked world; that insanity is diabolic

possession; that anatomical investigation of the human frame is sin

against the Holy Ghost; that chemistry leads to sorcery; that taking

interest for money is forbidden by Scripture; that geology must conform

to ancient Hebrew poetry. From the same source came in Austria the rule

of the "Immaculate Oath," under which university professors, long before

the dogma of the Immaculate Conception was defined by the Church,

were obliged to swear to their belief in that dogma before they

were permitted to teach even arithmetic or geometry; in England, the

denunciation of inoculation against smallpox; in Scotland, the protests

against using chloroform in childbirth as "vitiating the primal curse

against woman"; in France, the use in clerical schools of a historical

text-book from which Napoleon was left out; and, in America, the use

of Catholic manuals in which the Inquisition is declared to have been a

purely civil tribunal, or Protestant manuals in which the Puritans are

shown to have been all that we could now wish they had been.

So, too, among multitudes of similar efforts abroad, we have during

centuries the fettering of professors at English and Scotch universities

by test oaths, subscriptions to articles, and catechisms without number.

In our own country we have had in a vast multitude of denominational

colleges, as the first qualification for a professorship, not ability in

the subject to be taught, but fidelity to the particular shibboleth of

the denomination controlling the college or university.

Happily, in these days such attempts generally defeat themselves. The

supposed victim is generally made a man of mark by persecution, and

advanced to a higher and wider sphere of usefulness. In withstanding

the march of scientific truth, any Conference, Synod, Board of

Commissioners, Board of Trustees, or Faculty, is but as a nest of

field-mice in the path of a steam plough.

The harm done to religion in these attempts is far greater than that

done to science; for thereby suspicions are widely spread, especially

among open-minded young men, that the accepted Christian system demands

a concealment of truth, with the persecution of honest investigators,

and therefore must be false. Well was it said in substance by President

McCosh, of Princeton, that no more sure way of making unbelievers in

Christianity among young men could be devised than preaching to them

that the doctrines arrived at by the great scientific thinkers of this

period are opposed to religion.

Yet it is but justice here to say that more and more there is evolving

out of this past history of oppression a better spirit, which is making

itself manifest with power in the leading religious bodies of the world.

In the Church of Rome we have to-day such utterances as those of St.

George Mivart, declaring that the Church must not attempt to interfere

with science; that the Almighty in the Galileo case gave her a distinct

warning that the priesthood of science must remain with the men of

science. In the Anglican Church and its American daughter we have the

acts and utterances of such men as Archbishop Tait, Bishop Temple,

Dean Stanley, Dean Farrar, and many others, proving that the deepest

religious thought is more and more tending to peace rather than warfare

with science; and in the other churches, especially in America, while

there is yet much to be desired, the welcome extended in many of them to

Alexander Winchell, and the freedom given to views like his, augur well

for a better state of things in the future.

From the science of Anthropology, when rightly viewed as a whole, has

come the greatest aid to those who work to advance religion rather than

to promote any particular system of theology; for Anthropology and its

subsidiary sciences show more and more that man, since coming upon the

earth, has risen, from the period when he had little, if any, idea of

a great power above him, through successive stages of fetichism,

shamanism, and idolatry, toward better forms of belief, making him more

and more accessible to nobler forms of religion. The same sciences

show, too, within the historic period, the same tendency, and especially

within the events covered by our sacred books, a progress from

fetichism, of which so many evidences crop out in the early Jewish

worship as shown in the Old Testament Scriptures, through polytheism,

when Jehovah was but "a god above all gods," through the period when he

was "a jealous God," capricious and cruel, until he is revealed in such

inspired utterances as those of the nobler Psalms, the great passages

in Isaiah, the sublime preaching of Micah, and, above all, through the

ideal given to the world by Jesus of Nazareth.

Well indeed has an eminent divine of the Church of England in our own

time called on Christians to rejoice over this evolution, "between the

God of Samuel, who ordered infants to be slaughtered, and the God of the

Psalmist, whose tender mercies are over all his works; between the

God of the Patriarchs, who was always repenting, and the God of the

Apostles, who is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever, with whom

there is no variableness nor shadow of turning, between the God of the

Old Testament, who walked in the garden in the cool of the day, and the

God of the New Testament, whom no man hath seen nor can see; between the

God of Leviticus, who was so particular about the sacrificial furniture

and utensils, and the God of the Acts, who dwelleth not in temples made

with hands; between the God who hardened Pharaoh's heart, and the God

who will have all men to be saved; between the God of Exodus, who is

merciful only to those who love him, and the God of Christ--the heavenly

Father--who is kind unto the unthankful and the evil."

However overwhelming, then, the facts may be which Anthropology,

History, and their kindred sciences may, in the interest of simple

truth, establish against the theological doctrine of "the Fall"; however

completely they may fossilize various dogmas, catechisms, creeds,

confessions, "plans of salvation" and "schemes of redemption," which

have been evolved from the great minds of the theological period:

science, so far from making inroads on religion, or even upon our

Christian development of it, will strengthen all that is essential in

it, giving new and nobler paths to man's highest aspirations. For the

one great, legitimate, scientific conclusion of anthropology is, that,

more and more, a better civilization of the world, despite all its

survivals of savagery and barbarism, is developing men and women on whom

the declarations of the nobler Psalms, of Isaiah, of Micah, the Sermon

on the Mount, the first great commandment, and the second, which is

like unto it, St. Paul's praise of charity and St. James's definition

of "pure religion and undefiled," can take stronger hold for the more

effective and more rapid uplifting of our race.(198)

(198) For the resolution of the Presbyterian Synod of Mississippi in

1857, see Prof. Woodrow's speech before the Synod of South Carolina,

October 27 and 28, 1884, p. 6. As to the action of the Board of

Directors of the Theological Seminary of Columbia, see ibid. As to the

minority report in the Synod of South Carolina, see ibid., p. 24. For

the pithy sentences regarding the conduct of the majority in the synods

toward Dr. Woodrow, see the Rev. Mr. Flynn's article in the Southern

Presbyterian Review for April, 1885, p. 272, and elsewhere. For the

restrictions regarding the teaching of the Copernican theory and the

true doctrine of comets in German universities, see various histories of

astronomy, especially Madler. For the immaculate oath (Immaculaten-Eid)

as enforced upon the Austrian professors, see Luftkandl, Die

Josephinischen Ideen. For the effort of the Church in France, after the

restoration of the Bourbons, to teach a history of that country from

which the name of Napoleon should be left out, see Father Loriquet's

famous Histoire de France a l'Usage de la Jeunesse, Lyon, 1820, vol.

ii, see especially table of contents at the end. The book bears on its

title-page the well known initials of the Jesuit motto, A. M. D. G. (Ad

Majorem Dei Gloriam). For examples in England and Scotland, see various

English histories, and especially Buckle's chapters on Scotland. For a

longer collection of examples showing the suppression of anything like

unfettered thought upon scientific subjects in American universities,

see Inaugural Address at the Opening of Cornell University, by the

author of these chapters. For the citation regarding the evolution of

better and nobler ideas of God, see Church and Creed: Sermons preached

in the Chapel of the Foundling Hospital, London, by A. W. Momerie,

M. A., LL. D., Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in King's College,

London, 1890. For a very vigorous utterance on the other side, see a

recent charge of the Bishop of Gloucester.

CHAPTER XI. FROM "THE PRINCE OF THE POWER OF THE AIR" TO METEOROLOGY

I. GROWTH OF A THEOLOGICAL THEORY.

The popular beliefs of classic antiquity regarding storms, thunder,

and lightning, took shape in myths representing Vulcan as forging

thunderbolts, Jupiter as flinging them at his enemies, Aeolus intrusting

the winds in a bag to Aeneas, and the like. An attempt at their further

theological development is seen in the Pythagorean statement that

lightnings are intended to terrify the damned in Tartarus.

But at a very early period we see the beginning of a scientific view. In

Greece, the Ionic philosophers held that such phenomena are obedient to

law. Plato, Aristotle, and many lesser lights, attempted to account

for them on natural grounds; and their explanations, though crude, were

based upon observation and thought. In Rome, Lucretius, Seneca, Pliny,

and others, inadequate as their statements were, implanted at least the

germs of a science. But, as the Christian Church rose to power,

this evolution was checked; the new leaders of thought found, in the

Scriptures recognized by them as sacred, the basis for a new view, or

rather for a modification of the old view.

This ending of a scientific evolution based upon observation and

reason, and this beginning of a sacred science based upon the letter of

Scripture and on theology, are seen in the utterances of various fathers

in the early Church. As to the general features of this new development,

Tertullian held that sundry passages of Scripture prove lightning

identical with hell-fire; and this idea was transmitted from generation

to generation of later churchmen, who found an especial support

of Tertullian's view in the sulphurous smell experienced during

thunderstorms. St. Hilary thought the firmament very much lower than the

heavens, and that it was created not only for the support of the upper

waters, but also for the tempering of our atmosphere.(199) St. Ambrose

held that thunder is caused by the winds breaking through the solid

firmament, and cited from the prophet Amos the sublime passage regarding

"Him that establisheth the thunders."(200) He shows, indeed, some

conception of the true source of rain; but his whole reasoning is

limited by various scriptural texts. He lays great stress upon the

firmament as a solid outer shell of the universe: the heavens he holds

to be not far outside this outer shell, and argues regarding their

character from St. Paul's Epistle to the Corinthians and from the one

hundred and forty-eighth Psalm. As to "the waters which are above the

firmament," he takes up the objection of those who hold that, this

outside of the universe being spherical, the waters must slide off it,

especially if the firmament revolves; and he points out that it is by

no means certain that the OUTSIDE of the firmament IS spherical, and

insists that, if it does revolve, the water is just what is needed to

lubricate and cool its axis.

(199) For Tertullian, see the Apol. contra gentes, c. 47; also Augustin

de Angelis, Lectiones Meteorologicae, p. 64. For Hilary, see In Psalm

CXXXV. (Migne, Patr. Lat., vol. ix, p. 773).

(200) "Firmans tonitrua" (Amos iv, 13); the phrase does not appear in

our version.

St. Jerome held that God at the Creation, having spread out the

firmament between heaven and earth, and having separated the upper

waters from the lower, caused the upper waters to be frozen into ice,

in order to keep all in place. A proof of this view Jerome found in

the words of Ezekiel regarding "the crystal stretched above the

cherubim."(201)

(201) For Ambrose, see the Hexaemeron, lib. ii, cap. 3,4; lib. iii, cap.

5 (Migne, Patr. Lat., vol. xiv, pp. 148-150, 153, 165). The passage

as to lubrication of the heavenly axis is as follows: "Deinde cum ispi

dicant volvi orbem coeli stellis ardentibus refulgentem, nonne divina

providentia necessario prospexit, ut intra orbem coeli, et supra orbem

redundaret aqua, quae illa ferventis axis incendia temperaret?" For

Jerome, see his Epistola, lxix, cap. 6 (Migne, Patr. Lat., vol. xxii,

p.659).

The germinal principle in accordance with which all these theories were

evolved was most clearly proclaimed to the world by St. Augustine in his

famous utterance: "Nothing is to be accepted save on the authority of

Scripture, since greater is that authority than all the powers of the

human mind."(202) No treatise was safe thereafter which did not breathe

the spirit and conform to the letter of this maxim. Unfortunately, what

was generally understood by the "authority of Scripture" was the tyranny

of sacred books imperfectly transcribed, viewed through distorting

superstitions, and frequently interpreted by party spirit.

(202) "Major est quippe Scripturae hujas auctoritas, quam omnis humani

ingenii capacitas."--Augustine, De Genesi ad Lit., lib. ii, cap. 5

(Migne, Patr. Lat., vol. xxxiv, pp. 266, 267). Or, as he is cited by

Vincent of Beauvais (Spec. Nat., lib. iv, 98): "Non est aliquid temere

diffiniendum, sed quantum Scriptura dicit accipiendum, cujus major est

auctoritas quam omnis humani ingenii capacitas."

Following this precept of St. Augustine there were developed, in every

field, theological views of science which have never led to a single

truth--which, without exception, have forced mankind away from the

truth, and have caused Christendom to stumble for centuries into abysses

of error and sorrow. In meteorology, as in every other science with

which he dealt, Augustine based everything upon the letter of the sacred

text; and it is characteristic of the result that this man, so great

when untrammelled, thought it his duty to guard especially the whole

theory of the "waters above the heavens."

In the sixth century this theological reasoning was still further

developed, as we have seen, by Cosmas Indicopleustes. Finding a sanction

for the old Egyptian theory of the universe in the ninth chapter of

Hebrews, he insisted that the earth is a flat parallelogram, and that

from its outer edges rise immense walls supporting the firmament; then,

throwing together the reference to the firmament in Genesis and the

outburst of poetry in the Psalms regarding the "waters that be above

the heavens," he insisted that over the terrestrial universe are

solid arches bearing a vault supporting a vast cistern "containing

the waters"; finally, taking from Genesis the expression regarding

the "windows of heaven," he insisted that these windows are opened and

closed by the angels whenever the Almighty wishes to send rain upon the

earth or to withhold it.

This was accepted by the universal Church as a vast contribution to

thought; for several centuries it was the orthodox doctrine, and various

leaders in theology devoted themselves to developing and supplementing

it.

About the beginning of the seventh century, Isidore, Bishop of Seville,

was the ablest prelate in Christendom, and was showing those great

qualities which led to his enrolment among the saints of the Church. His

theological view of science marks an epoch. As to the "waters above the

firmament," Isidore contends that they must be lower than, the uppermost

heaven, though higher than the lower heaven, because in the one hundred

and forty-eighth Psalm they are mentioned AFTER the heavenly bodies

and the "heaven of heavens," but BEFORE the terrestrial elements. As to

their purpose, he hesitates between those who held that they were stored

up there by the prescience of God for the destruction of the world at

the Flood, as the words of Scripture that "the windows of heaven were

opened" seemed to indicate, and those who held that they were kept there

to moderate the heat of the heavenly bodies. As to the firmament, he is

in doubt whether it envelops the earth "like an eggshell," or is merely

spread over it "like a curtain"; for he holds that the passage in the

one hundred and fourth Psalm may be used to support either view.

Having laid these scriptural foundations, Isidore shows considerable

power of thought; indeed, at times, when he discusses the rainbow, rain,

hail, snow, and frost, his theories are rational, and give evidence

that, if he could have broken away from his adhesion to the letter of

Scripture, he might have given a strong impulse to the evolution of a

true science.(203)

(203) For Cosmas, see his Topographia Christiana (in Montfaucon,

Collectio nova patrum, vol. ii), and the more complete account of his

theory given in the chapter on Geography in this work. For Isidore, see

the Etymologiae, lib. xiii, cap. 7-9, De ordine creaturarum, cap. 3, 4,

and De natura rerum, cap. 29, 30. (Migne, Patr. Lat., vol. lxxxii, pp.

476, 477, vol. lxxxiii, pp. 920-922, 1001-1003).

About a century later appeared, at the other extremity of Europe, the

second in the trio of theological men of science in the early Middle

Ages--Bede the Venerable. The nucleus of his theory also is to be found

in the accepted view of the "firmament" and of the "waters above the

heavens," derived from Genesis. The firmament he holds to be spherical,

and of a nature subtile and fiery; the upper heavens, he says, which

contain the angels, God has tempered with ice, lest they inflame the

lower elements. As to the waters placed above the firmament, lower than

the spiritual heavens, but higher than all corporeal creatures, he says,

"Some declare that they were stored there for the Deluge, but others,

more correctly, that they are intended to temper the fire of the stars."

He goes on with long discussions as to various elements and forces in

Nature, and dwells at length upon the air, of which he says that the

upper, serene air is over the heavens; while the lower, which is coarse,

with humid exhalations, is sent off from the earth, and that in this are

lightning, hail, snow, ice, and tempests, finding proof of this in the

one hundred and forty-eighth Psalm, where these are commanded to "praise

the Lord from the earth."(204)

(204) See Bede, De natura rerum (Migne, Patr. Lat., vol. xc).

So great was Bede's authority, that nearly all the anonymous

speculations of the next following centuries upon these subjects were

eventually ascribed to him. In one of these spurious treatises an

attempt is made to get new light upon the sources of the waters above

the heavens, the main reliance being the sheet containing the animals

let down from heaven, in the vision of St. Peter. Another of these

treatises is still more curious, for it endeavours to account for

earthquakes and tides by means of the leviathan mentioned in Scripture.

This characteristic passage runs as follows: "Some say that the earth

contains the animal leviathan, and that he holds his tail after a

fashion of his own, so that it is sometimes scorched by the sun,

whereupon he strives to get hold of the sun, and so the earth is shaken

by the motion of his indignation; he drinks in also, at times, such huge

masses of the waves that when he belches them forth all the seas feel

their effect." And this theological theory of the tides, as caused by

the alternate suction and belching of leviathan, went far and wide.(205)

(205) See the treatise De mundi constitutione, in Bede's Opera (Migne,

Patr. Lat., vol. xc, p. 884).

In the writings thus covered with the name of Bede there is much showing

a scientific spirit, which might have come to something of permanent

value had it not been hampered by the supposed necessity of conforming

to the letter of Scripture. It is as startling as it is refreshing to

hear one of these medieval theorists burst out as follows against those

who are content to explain everything by the power of God: "What is more

pitiable than to say that a thing IS, because God is able to do it, and

not to show any reason why it is so, nor any purpose for which it is so;

just as if God did everything that he is able to do! You talk like one

who says that God is able to make a calf out of a log. But DID he ever

do it? Either, then, show a reason why a thing is so, or a purpose

wherefore it is so, or else cease to declare it so."(206)

(206) For this remonstrance, see the Elementa philosophiae, in Bede's

Opera (Migne, Patr. Lat., vol xc, p. 1139). This treatise, which has

also been printed, under the title of De philosophia mundi, among the

works of Honorius of Autun, is believed by modern scholars (Haureau,

Werner, Poole) to be the production of William of Conches.

The most permanent contribution of Bede to scientific thought in this

field was his revival of the view that the firmament is made of ice; and

he supported this from the words in the twenty-sixth chapter of Job,

"He bindeth up the waters in his thick cloud, and the cloud is not rent

under them."

About the beginning of the ninth century appeared the third in that

triumvirate of churchmen who were the oracles of sacred science

throughout the early Middle Ages--Rabanus Maurus, Abbot of Fulda and

Archbishop of Mayence. Starting, like all his predecessors, from the

first chapter of Genesis, borrowing here and there from the ancient

philosophers, and excluding everything that could conflict with the

letter of Scripture, he follows, in his work upon the universe, his

two predecessors, Isidore and Bede, developing especially St. Jerome's

theory, drawn from Ezekiel, that the firmament is strong enough to hold

up the "waters above the heavens," because it is made of ice.

For centuries the authority of these three great teachers was

unquestioned, and in countless manuals and catechisms their doctrine was

translated and diluted for the common mind. But about the second quarter

of the twelfth century a priest, Honorius of Autun, produced several

treatises which show that thought on this subject had made some little

progress. He explained the rain rationally, and mainly in the modern

manner; with the thunder he is less successful, but insists that the

thunderbolt "is not stone, as some assert." His thinking is vigorous

and independent. Had theorists such as he been many, a new science could

have been rapidly evolved, but the theological current was too strong.

(207)

(207) For Rabanus Maurus, see the Comment. in Genesim and De Universo

(Migne, Patr. Lat., vol. cvii, cxi). For a charmingly naive example of

the primers referred to, see the little Anglo-Saxon manual of astronomy,

sometimes attributed to Aelfric; it is in the vernacular, but is

translated in Wright's Popular Treatises on Science during the Middle

Ages. Bede is, of course, its chief source. For Honorius, see De

imagine mundi and Hexaemeron (Migne, Patr. Lat., vol. clxxii). The De

philosophia mundi, the most rational of all, is, however, believed by

modern scholars to be unjustly ascribed to him. See note above.

The strength of this current which overwhelmed the thought of Honorius

is seen again in the work of the Dominican monk, John of San Geminiano,

who in the thirteenth century gave forth his Summa de Exemplis for the

use of preachers in his order. Of its thousand pages, over two hundred

are devoted to illustrations drawn from the heavens and the elements.

A characteristic specimen is his explanation of the Psalmist's phrase,

"The arrows of the thunder." These, he tells us, are forged out of a dry

vapour rising from the earth and kindled by the heat of the upper air,

which then, coming into contact with a cloud just turning into rain,

"is conglutinated like flour into dough," but, being too hot to be

extinguished, its particles become merely sharpened at the lower end,

and so blazing arrows, cleaving and burning everything they touch.(208)

(208) See Joannes a S. Geminiano, Summa, c. 75.

But far more important, in the thirteenth century, was the fact that the

most eminent scientific authority of that age, Albert the Great, Bishop

of Ratisbon, attempted to reconcile the speculations of Aristotle

with theological views derived from the fathers. In one very important

respect he improved upon the meteorological views of his great master.

The thunderbolt, he says, is no mere fire, but the product of black

clouds containing much mud, which, when it is baked by the intense heat,

forms a fiery black or red stone that falls from the sky, tearing

beams and crushing walls in its course: such he has seen with his own

eyes.(209)

(209) See Albertus Magnus, II Sent., Op., vol. xv, p. 137, a. (cited

by Heller, Gesch. d. Physik, vol. i, p. 184) and his Liber Methaurorum,

III, iv, 18 (of which I have used the edition of Venice, 1488).

The monkish encyclopedists of the later Middle Ages added little to

these theories. As we glance over the pages of Vincent of Beauvais,

the monk Bartholomew, and William of Conches, we note only a growing

deference to the authority of Aristotle as supplementing that of Isidore

and Bede and explaining sacred Scripture. Aristotle is treated like

a Church father, but extreme care is taken not to go beyond the great

maxim of St. Augustine; then, little by little, Bede and Isidore

fall into the background, Aristotle fills the whole horizon, and his

utterances are second in sacredness only to the text of Holy Writ.

A curious illustration of the difficulties these medieval scholars had

to meet in reconciling the scientific theories of Aristotle with the

letter of the Bible is seen in the case of the rainbow. It is to the

honour of Aristotle that his conclusions regarding the rainbow, though

slightly erroneous, were based upon careful observation and evolved by

reasoning alone; but his Christian commentators, while anxious to follow

him, had to bear in mind the scriptural statement that God had created

the rainbow as a sign to Noah that there should never again be a

Flood on the earth. Even so bold a thinker as Cardinal d'Ailly, whose

speculations as to the geography of the earth did so much afterward in

stimulating Columbus, faltered before this statement, acknowledging that

God alone could explain it; but suggested that possibly never before the

Deluge had a cloud been suffered to take such a position toward the sun

as to cause a rainbow.

The learned cardinal was also constrained to believe that certain stars

and constellations have something to do in causing the rain, since these

would best explain Noah's foreknowledge of the Deluge. In connection

with this scriptural doctrine of winds came a scriptural doctrine of

earthquakes: they were believed to be caused by winds issuing from the

earth, and this view was based upon the passage in the one hundred and

thirty-fifth Psalm, "He bringeth the wind out of his treasuries."(210)

(210) For D'Ailly, see his Concordia astronomicae veritatis cum

theologia (Paris, 1483--in the Imago mundi--and Venice, 1490); also

Eck's commentary on Aristotle's Meteorologica (Ausburg, 1519), lib. ii,

nota 2; also Reisch, Margarita philosophica, lib. ix, c. 18.

Such were the main typical attempts during nearly fourteen centuries to

build up under theological guidance and within scriptural limitations a

sacred science of meteorology. But these theories were mainly evolved

in the effort to establish a basis and general theory of phenomena: it

still remained to account for special manifestations, and here came a

twofold development of theological thought.

On one hand, these phenomena were attributed to the Almighty, and, on

the other, to Satan. As to the first of these theories, we constantly

find the Divine wrath mentioned by the earlier fathers as the cause of

lightning, hailstorms, hurricanes, and the like.

In the early days of Christianity we see a curious struggle between

pagan and Christian belief upon this point. Near the close of the second

century the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, in his effort to save the empire,

fought a hotly contested battle with the Quadi, in what is now Hungary.

While the issue of this great battle was yet doubtful there came

suddenly a blinding storm beating into the faces of the Quadi, and this

gave the Roman troops the advantage, enabling Marcus Aurelius to win a

decisive victory. Votaries of each of the great religions claimed that

this storm was caused by the object of their own adoration. The pagans

insisted that Jupiter had sent the storm in obedience to their prayers,

and on the Antonine Column at Rome we may still see the figure of

Olympian Jove casting his thunderbolts and pouring a storm of rain from

the open heavens against the Quadi. On the other hand, the Christians

insisted that the storm had been sent by Jehovah in obedience to THEIR

prayers; and Tertullian, Eusebius, St. Gregory of Nyssa, and St. Jerome

were among those who insisted upon this meteorological miracle; the

first two, indeed, in the fervour of their arguments for its reality,

allowing themselves to be carried considerably beyond exact historical

truth.(211)

(211) For the authorities, pagan and Christian, see the note of

Merivale, in his History of the Romans under the Empire, chap. lxviii.

He refers for still fuller citations to Fynes Clinton's Fasti Rom., p.

24.

As time went on, the fathers developed this view more and more from

various texts in the Jewish and Christian sacred books, substituting for

Jupiter flinging his thunderbolts the Almighty wrapped in thunder and

sending forth his lightnings. Through the Middle Ages this was fostered

until it came to be accepted as a mere truism, entering into all

medieval thinking, and was still further developed by an attempt to

specify the particular sins which were thus punished. Thus even the

rational Florentine historian Villani ascribed floods and fires to the

"too great pride of the city of Florence and the ingratitude of the

citizens toward God," which, "of course," says a recent historian,

"meant their insufficient attention to the ceremonies of religion."(212)

(212) See Trollope, History of Florence, vol. i, p. 64.

In the thirteenth century the Cistercian monk, Caesarius of Heisterbach,

popularized the doctrine in central Europe. His rich collection of

anecdotes for the illustration of religious truths was the favourite

recreative reading in the convents for three centuries, and exercised

great influence over the thought of the later Middle Ages. In this work

he relates several instances of the Divine use of lightning, both

for rescue and for punishment. Thus he tells us how the steward

(cellerarius) of his own monastery was saved from the clutch of a robber

by a clap of thunder which, in answer to his prayer, burst suddenly

from the sky and frightened the bandit from his purpose: how, in a

Saxon theatre, twenty men were struck down, while a priest escaped,

not because he was not a greater sinner than the rest, but because the

thunderbolt had respect for his profession! It is Cesarius, too, who

tells us the story of the priest of Treves, struck by lightning in his

own church, whither he had gone to ring the bell against the storm, and

whose sins were revealed by the course of the lightning, for it tore his

clothes from him and consumed certain parts of his body, showing that

the sins for which he was punished were vanity and unchastity.(213)

(213) See Caesarius Heisterbacensis, Dialogus miraculorum, lib. x, c.

28-30.

This mode of explaining the Divine interference more minutely is

developed century after century, and we find both Catholics and

Protestants assigning as causes of unpleasant meteorological phenomena

whatever appears to them wicked or even unorthodox. Among the English

Reformers, Tyndale quotes in this kind of argument the thirteenth

chapter of I. Samuel, showing that, when God gave Israel a king, it

thundered and rained. Archbishop Whitgift, Bishop Bale, and Bishop

Pilkington insisted on the same view. In Protestant Germany, about the

same period, Plieninger took a dislike to the new Gregorian calendar and

published a volume of Brief Reflections, in which he insisted that

the elements had given utterance to God's anger against it, calling

attention to the fact that violent storms raged over almost all Germany

during the very ten days which the Pope had taken out for the correction

of the year, and that great floods began with the first days of the

corrected year.(214)

(214) For Tyndale, see his Doctrinal Treatises, p. 194, and for

Whitgift, see his Works, vol. ii, pp. 477-483; Bale, Works, pp.

244, 245; and Pilkington, Works, pp. 177, 536 (all in Parker Society

Publications). Bishop Bale cites especially Job xxxviii, Ecclesiasticus

xiii, and Revelation viii, as supporting the theory. For Plieninger's

words, see Janssen, Geschichte des deutschen Volkes, vol. v, p. 350.

Early in the seventeenth century, Majoli, Bishop of Voltoraria, in

southern Italy, produced his huge work Dies Canicularii, or Dog Days,

which remained a favourite encyclopedia in Catholic lands for over a

hundred years. Treating of thunder and lightning, he compares them

to bombs against the wicked, and says that the thunderbolt is "an

exhalation condensed and cooked into stone," and that "it is not to be

doubted that, of all instruments of God's vengeance, the thunderbolt is

the chief"; that by means of it Sennacherib and his army were consumed;

that Luther was struck by lightning in his youth as a caution against

departing from the Catholic faith; that blasphemy and Sabbath-breaking

are the sins to which this punishment is especially assigned, and

he cites the case of Dathan and Abiram. Fifty years later the Jesuit

Stengel developed this line of thought still further in four thick

quarto volumes on the judgments of God, adding an elaborate schedule for

the use of preachers in the sermons of an entire year. Three chapters

were devoted to thunder, lightning, and storms. That the author teaches

the agency in these of diabolical powers goes without saying; but this

can only act, he declares, by Divine permission, and the thunderbolt is

always the finger of God, which rarely strikes a man save for his sins,

and the nature of the special sin thus punished may be inferred from the

bodily organs smitten. A few years later, in Protestant Swabia, Pastor

Georg Nuber issued a volume of "weather-sermons," in which he discusses

nearly every sort of elemental disturbances--storms, floods, droughts,

lightning, and hail. These, he says, come direct from God for human

sins, yet no doubt with discrimination, for there are five sins which

God especially punishes with lightning and hail--namely, impenitence,

incredulity, neglect of the repair of churches, fraud in the payment

of tithes to the clergy, and oppression of subordinates, each of which

points he supports with a mass of scriptural texts.(215)

(215) For Majoli, see Dies Can., I, i; for Stengel, see the De judiciis

divinis, vol. ii, pp. 15-61, and especially the example of the impurus

et saltator sacerdos, fulmine castratus, pp. 26, 27. For Nuber, see his

Conciones meteoricae, Ulm, 1661.

This doctrine having become especially precious both to Catholics and to

Protestants, there were issued handbooks of prayers against bad weather:

among these was the Spiritual Thunder and Storm Booklet, produced in

1731 by a Protestant scholar, Stoltzlin, whose three or four hundred

pages of prayer and song, "sighs for use when it lightens fearfully,"

and "cries of anguish when the hailstorm is drawing on," show a

wonderful adaptability to all possible meteorological emergencies. The

preface of this volume is contributed by Prof. Dilherr, pastor of the

great church of St. Sebald at Nuremberg, who, in discussing the Divine

purposes of storms, adds to the three usually assigned--namely, God's

wish to manifest his power, to display his anger, and to drive sinners

to repentance--a fourth, which, he says, is that God may show us "with

what sort of a stormbell he will one day ring in the last judgment."

About the end of the first quarter of the eighteenth century we find,

in Switzerland, even the eminent and rational Professor of Mathematics,

Scheuchzer, publishing his Physica Sacra, with the Bible as a basis, and

forced to admit that the elements, in the most literal sense, utter the

voice of God. The same pressure was felt in New England. Typical are

the sermons of Increase Mather on The Voice of God in Stormy Winds. He

especially lays stress on the voice of God speaking to Job out of the

whirlwind, and upon the text, "Stormy wind fulfilling his word." He

declares, "When there are great tempests, the angels oftentimes have a

hand therein,... yea, and sometimes evil angels." He gives several cases

of blasphemers struck by lightning, and says, "Nothing can be more

dangerous for mortals than to contemn dreadful providences, and, in

particular, dreadful tempests."

His distinguished son, Cotton Mather, disentangled himself somewhat from

the old view, as he had done in the interpretation of comets. In his

Christian Philosopher, his Thoughts for the Day of Rain, and his Sermon

preached at the Time of the Late Storm (in 1723), he is evidently

tending toward the modern view. Yet, from time to time, the older view

has reasserted itself, and in France, as recently as the year 1870, we

find the Bishop of Verdun ascribing the drought afflicting his diocese

to the sin of Sabbath-breaking.(216)

(216) For Stoltzlin, see his Geistliches Donner- und Wetter-Buchlein

(Zurich, 1731). For Increase Mather, see his The Voice of God, etc.

(Boston, 1704). This rare volume is in the rich collection of the

American Antiquarian Society at Worcester. For Cotton Mather's view, see

the chapter From Signs and Wonders to Law, in this work. For the Bishop

of Verdun, see the Semaine relig. de Lorraine, 1879, p. 445 (cited by

"Paul Parfait," in his Dossier des Pelerinages, pp. 141-143).

This theory, which attributed injurious meteorological phenomena mainly

to the purposes of God, was a natural development, and comparatively

harmless; but at a very early period there was evolved another theory,

which, having been ripened into a doctrine, cost the earth dear indeed.

Never, perhaps, in the modern world has there been a dogma more prolific

of physical, mental, and moral agony throughout whole nations and during

whole centuries. This theory, its development by theology, its fearful

results to mankind, and its destruction by scientific observation and

thought, will next be considered.

II. DIABOLIC AGENCY IN STORMS.

While the fathers and schoolmen were labouring to deduce a science of

meteorology from our sacred books, there oozed up in European society a

mass of traditions and observances which had been lurking since the days

of paganism; and, although here and there appeared a churchman to oppose

them, the theologians and ecclesiastics ere long began to adopt them and

to clothe them with the authority of religion.

Both among the pagans of the Roman Empire and among the barbarians of

the North the Christian missionaries had found it easier to prove the

new God supreme than to prove the old gods powerless. Faith in the

miracles of the new religion seemed to increase rather than to diminish

faith in the miracles of the old; and the Church at last began admitting

the latter as facts, but ascribing them to the devil. Jupiter and Odin

sank into the category of ministers of Satan, and transferred to

that master all their former powers. A renewed study of Scripture by

theologians elicited overwhelming proofs of the truth of this doctrine.

Stress was especially laid on the declaration of Scripture, "The gods of

the heathen are devils."(217) Supported by this and other texts, it soon

became a dogma. So strong was the hold it took, under the influence

of the Church, that not until late in the seventeenth century did its

substantial truth begin to be questioned.

(217) For so the Vulgate and all the early versions rendered Ps. xcvi,

5.

With no field of action had the sway of the ancient deities been more

identified than with that of atmospheric phenomena. The Roman heard

Jupiter, and the Teuton heard Thor, in the thunder. Could it be doubted

that these powerful beings would now take occasion, unless hindered by

the command of the Almighty, to vent their spite against those who had

deserted their altars? Might not the Almighty himself be willing to

employ the malice of these powers of the air against those who had

offended him?

It was, indeed, no great step, for those whose simple faith accepted

rain or sunshine as an answer to their prayers, to suspect that the

untimely storms or droughts, which baffled their most earnest petitions,

were the work of the archenemy, "the prince of the power of the air."

The great fathers of the Church had easily found warrant for this

doctrine in Scripture. St. Jerome declared the air to be full of devils,

basing this belief upon various statements in the prophecies of Isaiah

and in the Epistle to the Ephesians. St. Augustine held the same view as

beyond controversy.(218)

(218) For St. Jerome, see his Com. in Ep. ad Ephesios (lib. iii, cap.6):

commenting on the text, "Our battle is not with flesh and blood," he

explains this as meaning the devils in the air, and adds, "Nam et in

alio loco de daemonibus quod in aere isto vagentur, Apostolus ait:

In quibus ambulastis aliquando juxta Saeculum mundi istius, secundum

principem potestatis aeris spiritus, qui nunc operatur in filos

diffidentiae (Eph, ii,2). Haec autem omnium doctorum opinio est, quod

aer iste qui coelum et terram medius dividens, inane appellatur, plenus

sit contrariis fortitudinibus." See also his Com. in Isaiam, lib. xiii,

cap. 50 (Migne, Patr. Lat., vol. xxiv, p. 477). For Augustine, see the

De Civitate Dei, passim.

During the Middle Ages this doctrine of the diabolical origin of storms

went on gathering strength. Bede had full faith in it, and narrates

various anecdotes in support of it. St. Thomas Aquinas gave it his

sanction, saying in his all authoritative Summa, "Rains and winds, and

whatsoever occurs by local impulse alone, can be caused by demons."

"It is," he says, "a dogma of faith that the demons can produce wind,

storms, and rain of fire from heaven."

Albert the Great taught the same doctrine, and showed how a

certain salve thrown into a spring produced whirlwinds. The great

Franciscan--the "seraphic doctor"--St. Bonaventura, whose services to

theology earned him one of the highest places in the Church, and to whom

Dante gave special honour in paradise, set upon this belief his high

authority. The lives of the saints, and the chronicles of the Middle

Ages, were filled with it. Poetry and painting accepted the idea and

developed it. Dante wedded it to verse, and at Venice this thought

may still be seen embodied in one of the grand pictures of Bordone: a

shipload of demons is seen approaching Venice in a storm, threatening

destruction to the city, but St. Mark, St. George, and St. Nicholas

attack the vessel, and disperse the hellish crew.(219)

(219) For Bede, see the Hist. Eccles., vol. i, p. 17; Vita Cuthberti,

c. 17 (Migne, tome xliv). For Thomas Aquinas, see the Summa, pars I, qu.

lxxx, art. 2. The second citation I owe to Rydberg, Magic of the Middle

Ages, p. 73, where the whole interesting passage is given at length. For

Albertus Magnus, see the De Potentia Daemonum (cited by Maury, Legendes

Pieuses). For Bonaventura, see the Comp. Theol. Veritat., ii, 26. For

Dante, see Purgatorio, c. 5. On Bordone's picture, see Maury, Legendes

Pieuses, p. 18, note.

The popes again and again sanctioned this doctrine, and it was

amalgamated with various local superstitions, pious imaginations, and

interesting arguments, to strike the fancy of the people at large. A

strong argument in favour of a diabolical origin of the thunderbolt

was afforded by the eccentricities of its operation. These attracted

especial attention in the Middle Ages, and the popular love of marvel

generalized isolated phenomena into rules. Thus it was said that the

lightning strikes the sword in the sheath, gold in the purse, the

foot in the shoe, leaving sheath and purse and shoe unharmed; that it

consumes a human being internally without injuring the skin; that it

destroys nets in the water, but not on the land; that it kills one

man, and leaves untouched another standing beside him; that it can tear

through a house and enter the earth without moving a stone from its

place; that it injures the heart of a tree, but not the bark; that wine

is poisoned by it, while poisons struck by it lose their venom; that a

man's hair may be consumed by it and the man be unhurt.(220)

(220) See, for lists of such admiranda, any of the early writers--e. g.,

Vincent of Beauvais, Reisch's Margarita, or Eck's Aristotle.

These peculiar phenomena, made much of by the allegorizing sermonizers

of the day, were used in moral lessons from every pulpit. Thus the

Carmelite, Matthias Farinator, of Vienna, who at the Pope's own instance

compiled early in the fifteenth century that curious handbook of

illustrative examples for preachers, the Lumen Animae, finds a spiritual

analogue for each of these anomalies.(221)

(221) See the Lumen animae, Eichstadt, 1479.

This doctrine grew, robust and noxious, until, in the fifteenth,

sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, we find its bloom in a multitude

of treatises by the most learned of the Catholic and Protestant divines,

and its fruitage in the torture chambers and on the scaffolds throughout

Christendom. At the Reformation period, and for nearly two hundred years

afterward, Catholics and Protestants vied with each other in promoting

this growth. John Eck, the great opponent of Luther, gave to the

world an annotated edition of Aristotle's Physics, which was long

authoritative in the German universities; and, though the text is free

from this doctrine, the woodcut illustrating the earth's atmosphere

shows most vividly, among the clouds of mid-air, the devils who there

reign supreme.(222)

(222) See Eck, Aristotelis Meteorologica, Augsburg, 1519.

Luther, in the other religious camp, supported the superstition even

more zealously, asserting at times his belief that the winds themselves

are only good or evil spirits, and declaring that a stone thrown into a

certain pond in his native region would cause a dreadful storm because

of the devils, kept prisoners there.(223)

(223) For Luther, see the Table Talk; also Michelet, Life of Luther

(translated by Hazlitt, p. 321).

Just at the close of the same century, Catholics and Protestants

welcomed alike the great work of Delrio. In this, the power of devils

over the elements is proved first from the Holy Scriptures, since, he

declares, "they show that Satan brought fire down from heaven to consume

the servants and flocks of Job, and that he stirred up a violent

wind, which overwhelmed in ruin the sons and daughters of Job at their

feasting." Next, Delrio insists on the agreement of all the orthodox

fathers, that it was the devil himself who did this, and attention is

called to the fact that the hail with which the Egyptians were punished

is expressly declared in Holy Scripture to have been brought by the

evil angels. Citing from the Apocalypse, he points to the four angels

standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the winds and

preventing their doing great damage to mortals; and he dwells especially

upon the fact that the devil is called by the apostle a "prince of the

power of the air." He then goes on to cite the great fathers of the

Church--Clement, Jerome, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas.(224)

(224) For Delrio, see his Disquisitiones Magicae, first printed at Liege

in 1599-1600, but reprinted again and again throughout the seventeenth

century. His interpretation of Psalm lxxviii, 47-49, was apparently

shared by the translators of our own authorized edition. For citations

by him, see Revelation vii, 1,; Ephesians ii, 2. Even according to

modern commentators (e.g., Alford), the word here translated "power"

denotes not MIGHT, but GOVERNMENT, COURT, HIERARCHY; and in this sense

it was always used by the ecclesiastical writers, whose conception

is best rendered by our plural--"powers." See Delrio, Disquisitiones

Magicae, lib. ii, c. 11.

This doctrine was spread not only in ponderous treatises, but in light

literature and by popular illustrations. In the Compendium Maleficarum

of the Italian monk Guacci, perhaps the most amusing book in the whole

literature of witchcraft, we may see the witch, in propria persona,

riding the diabolic goat through the clouds while the storm rages around

and beneath her; and we may read a rich collection of anecdotes, largely

contemporary, which establish the required doctrine beyond question.

The first and most natural means taken against this work of Satan in the

air was prayer; and various petitions are to be found scattered through

the Christian liturgies--some very beautiful and touching. This means of

escape has been relied upon, with greater or less faith, from those days

to these. Various medieval saints and reformers, and devoted men in

all centuries, from St. Giles to John Wesley, have used it with results

claimed to be miraculous. Whatever theory any thinking man may hold

in the matter, he will certainly not venture a reproachful word: such

prayers have been in all ages a natural outcome of the mind of man in

trouble.(225)

(225) For Guacci, see his Compendium Maleficarum (Milan, 1608). For the

cases of St. Giles, John Wesley, and others stilling the tempests, see

Brewer, Dictionary of Miracles, s. v. Prayer.

But against the "power of the air" were used other means of a very

different character and tendency, and foremost among these was exorcism.

In an exorcism widely used and ascribed to Pope Gregory XIII, the

formula is given: "I, a priest of Christ,... do command ye, most foul

spirits, who do stir up these clouds,... that ye depart from them, and

disperse yourselves into wild and untilled places, that ye may be no

longer able to harm men or animals or fruits or herbs, or whatsoever

is designed for human use." But this is mild, indeed, compared to some

later exorcisms, as when the ritual runs: "All the people shall rise,

and the priest, turning toward the clouds, shall pronounce these

words: 'I exorcise ye, accursed demons, who have dared to use, for the

accomplishment of your iniquity, those powers of Nature by which God in

divers ways worketh good to mortals; who stir up winds, gather vapours,

form clouds, and condense them into hail.... I exorcise ye,... that

ye relinquish the work ye have begun, dissolve the hail, scatter the

clouds, disperse the vapours, and restrain the winds.'" The rubric goes

on to order that then there shall be a great fire kindled in an open

place, and that over it the sign of the cross shall be made, and the one

hundred and fourteenth Psalm chanted, while malodorous substances, among

them sulphur and asafoetida, shall be cast into the flames. The purpose

seems to have been literally to "smoke out" Satan.(226)

(226) See Polidorus Valerius, Practica exorcistarum; also the Thesaurus

exorcismorum (Cologne, 1626), pp. 158-162.

Manuals of exorcisms became important--some bulky quartos, others

handbooks. Noteworthy among the latter is one by the Italian priest

Locatelli, entitled Exorcisms most Powerful and Efficacious for the

Dispelling of Aerial Tempests, whether raised by Demons at their own

Instance or at the Beck of some Servant of the Devil.(227)

(227) That is, Exorcismi, etc. A "corrected" second edition was printed

at Laybach, 1680, in 24mo, to which is appended another manual of Preces

et conjurationes contra aereas tempestates, omnibus sacerdotibus utiles

et necessaria, printed at the monastery of Kempten (in Bavaria) in 1667.

The latter bears as epigraph the passage from the gospels describing

Christ's stilling of the winds.

The Jesuit Gretser, in his famous book on Benedictions and Maledictions,

devotes a chapter to this subject, dismissing summarily the scepticism

that questions the power of devils over the elements, and adducing the

story of Job as conclusive.(228)

(228) See Gretser, De benedictionibus et maledictionibus, lib. ii, c.

48.

Nor was this theory of exorcism by any means confined to the elder

Church. Luther vehemently upheld it, and prescribed especially the first

chapter of St. John's gospel as of unfailing efficacy against thunder

and lightning, declaring that he had often found the mere sign of the

cross, with the text, "The word was made flesh," sufficient to put

storms to flight.(229)

(229) So, at least, says Gretser (in his De ben. et aml., as above).

From the beginning of the Middle Ages until long after the Reformation

the chronicles give ample illustration of the successful use of such

exorcisms. So strong was the belief in them that it forced itself into

minds comparatively rational, and found utterance in treatises of much

importance.

But, since exorcisms were found at times ineffectual, other means were

sought, and especially fetiches of various sorts. One of the earliest of

these appeared when Pope Alexander I, according to tradition, ordained

that holy water should be kept in churches and bedchambers to drive

away devils.(230) Another safeguard was found in relics, and of similar

efficacy were the so-called "conception billets" sold by the Carmelite

monks. They contained a formula upon consecrated paper, at which the

devil might well turn pale. Buried in the corner of a field, one of

these was thought to give protection against bad weather and destructive

insects.(231)

(230) "Instituit ut aqua quam sanctum appellamus sale admixta

interpositus sacris orationibus et in templis et in cubiculis ad

fugandos daemones retineretur." Platina, Vitae Pontif. But the story is

from the False Decretals.

(231) See Rydberg, The Magic of the Middle Ages, translated by Edgren,

pp. 63-66.

But highest in repute during centuries was the Agnus Dei--a piece of wax

blessed by the Pope's own hand, and stamped with the well-known device

representing the "Lamb of God." Its powers were so marvellous that Pope

Urban V thought three of these cakes a fitting gift from himself to the

Greek Emperor. In the Latin doggerel recounting their virtues, their

meteorological efficacy stands first, for especial stress is laid on

their power of dispelling the thunder. The stress thus laid by Pope

Urban, as the infallible guide of Christendom, on the efficacy of this

fetich, gave it great value throughout Europe, and the doggerel verses

reciting its virtues sank deep into the popular mind. It was

considered a most potent means of dispelling hail, pestilence, storms,

conflagrations, and enchantments; and this feeling was deepened by the

rules and rites for its consecration. So solemn was the matter, that the

manufacture and sale of this particular fetich was, by a papal bull of

1471, reserved for the Pope himself, and he only performed the required

ceremony in the first and seventh years of his pontificate. Standing

unmitred, he prayed: "O God,... we humbly beseech thee that thou wilt

bless these waxen forms, figured with the image of an innocent lamb,...

that, at the touch and sight of them, the faithful may break forth into

praises, and that the crash of hailstorms, the blast of hurricanes, the

violence of tempests, the fury of winds, and the malice of thunderbolts

may be tempered, and evil spirits flee and tremble before the standard

of thy holy cross, which is graven upon them."(232)

(232) These pious charms are still in use in the Church, and may be

found described in any ecclesiastical cyclopaedia. The doggerel verses

run as follows:

"Tonitrua magna terret, Inimicos nostras domat Et peccata nostra delet;

Praegnantem cum partu salvat, Ab incendio praeservat, Dona dignis multa

confert, A subersione servat, Utque malis mala defert. A morte cita

liberat, Portio, quamvis parva sit, Et Cacodaemones fugat, Ut magna

tamen proficit."

See these verses cited in full faith, so late as 1743, in Father Vincent

of Berg's Enchiridium, pp. 23, 24, where is an ample statement of the

virtues of the Agnus Dei, and istructions for its use. A full account

of the rites used in consecrating this fetich, with the prayers and

benedictions which gave colour to this theory of the powers of the Agnus

Dei, may be found in the ritual of the Church. I have used the edition

entitled Sacrarum ceremoniarum sive rituum Sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae

libri tres, Rome, 1560, in folio. The form of the papal prayer is as

follows: "Deus... te supplicater deprecamur, ut... has cereas formas,

innocentissimi agni imagine figuritas, benedicere... digneris, ut per

ejus tactum et visum fideles invitentur as laudes, fragor grandinum,

procella turbinum, impetus tempestatum, ventorum rabies, infesta

tonitrua temperentur, fugiant atque tremiscant maligni spiritus ante

Sanctae Crucis vexillum, quod in illis exculptum est...."(Sacr. Cer.

Rom. Eccl., as above). If any are curious as to the extent to which this

consecrated wax was a specific for all spiritual and most temporal ills

during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, let them consult the

Jesuit Litterae annuae, passim.

Another favourite means with the clergy of the older Church for bringing

to naught the "power of the air," was found in great processions bearing

statues, relics, and holy emblems through the streets. Yet even these

were not always immediately effective. One at Liege, in the thirteenth

century, thrice proved unsuccessful in bringing rain, when at last

it was found that the image of the Virgin had been forgotten! A new

procession was at once formed, the Salve Regina sung, and the rain came

down in such torrents as to drive the devotees to shelter.(233)

(233) John of Winterthur describes many such processions in Switzerland

in the thirteenth century, and all the monkish chronicles speak of them.

See also Rydberg, Magic of the Middle Ages, p. 74.

In Catholic lands this custom remains to this day, and very important

features in these processions are the statues and the reliquaries of

patron saints. Some of these excel in bringing sunshine, others in

bringing rain. The Cathedral of Chartres is so fortunate as to possess

sundry relics of St. Taurin, especially potent against dry weather,

and some of St. Piat, very nearly as infallible against wet weather. In

certain regions a single saint gives protection alternately against wet

and dry weather--as, for example, St. Godeberte at Noyon. Against storms

St. Barbara is very generally considered the most powerful protectress;

but, in the French diocese of Limoges, Notre Dame de Crocq has proved a

most powerful rival, for when, a few years since, all the neighbouring

parishes were ravaged by storms, not a hailstone fell in the canton

which she protected. In the diocese of Tarbes, St. Exupere is especially

invoked against hail, peasants flocking from all the surrounding country

to his shrine.(234)

(234) As to protection by special saints as stated, see the Guide du

touriste et du pelerin a Chartes, 1867 (cited by "Paul Parfait," in his

Dossier des Pelerinages); also pp. 139-145 of the Dossier.

But the means of baffling the powers of the air which came to be most

widely used was the ringing of consecrated church bells.

This usage had begun in the time of Charlemagne, and there is extant a

prohibition of his against the custom of baptizing bells and of hanging

certain tags(235) on their tongues as a protection against hailstorms;

but even Charlemagne was powerless against this current of medieval

superstition. Theological reasons were soon poured into it, and in the

year 968 Pope John XIII gave it the highest ecclesiastical sanction by

himself baptizing the great bell of his cathedral church, the Lateran,

and christening it with his own name.(236)

(235) Perticae. See Montanus, Hist. Nachricht van den Glocken (Chenmitz,

1726), p. 121; and Meyer, Der Aberglaube des Mittelalters, p. 186.

(236) For statements regarding Pope John and bell superstitions, see

Higgins's Anacalypsis, vol. ii, p. 70. See also Platina, Vitae Pontif.,

s. v. John XIII, and Baronius, Annales Ecclesiastici, sub anno 968.

The conjecture of Baronius that the bell was named after St. John the

Baptist, is even more startling than the accepted tradition of the

Pope's sponsorship.

This idea was rapidly developed, and we soon find it supported in

ponderous treatises, spread widely in sermons, and popularized in

multitudes of inscriptions cast upon the bells themselves. This branch

of theological literature may still be studied in multitudes of church

towers throughout Europe. A bell at Basel bears the inscription, "Ad

fugandos demones." Another, in Lugano, declares "The sound of this bell

vanquishes tempests, repels demons, and summons men." Another, at

the Cathedral of Erfurt, declares that it can "ward off lightning and

malignant demons." A peal in the Jesuit church at the university town

of Pont-a-Mousson bore the words, "They praise God, put to flight the

clouds, affright the demons, and call the people." This is dated 1634.

Another bell in that part of France declares, "It is I who dissipate the

thunders"(Ego sum qui dissipo tonitrua).(237)

(237) For these illustrations, with others equally striking, see Meyer,

Der Aberglaube des Mittelalters, pp. 185, 186. For the later examples,

see Germain, Anciennes cloches lorraines (Nancy, 1885), pp. 23, 27.

Another, in one of the forest cantons of Switzerland, bears a doggerel

couplet, which may be thus translated:

"On the devil my spite I'll vent, And, God helping, bad weather

prevent."(238)

(238) "An dem Tufel will cih mich rachen, Mit der hilf gotz alle bosen

wetter erbrechen." (See Meyer, as above.)

Very common were inscriptions embodying this doctrine in sonorous Latin.

Naturally, then, there grew up a ritual for the consecration of bells.

Knollys, in his quaint translation of the old chronicler Sleidan,

gives us the usage in the simple English of the middle of the sixteenth

century:

"In lyke sorte (as churches) are the belles used. And first, forsouth,

they must hange so, as the Byshop may goe round about them. Whiche

after he hath sayde certen Psalmes, he consecrateth water and salte, and

mingleth them together, wherwith he washeth the belle diligently both

within and without, after wypeth it drie, and with holy oyle draweth in

it the signe of the crosse, and prayeth God, that whan they shall rynge

or sounde that bell, all the disceiptes of the devyll may vanyshe away,

hayle, thondryng, lightening, wyndes, and tempestes, and all untemperate

weathers may be aswaged. Whan he hath wipte out the crosse of oyle wyth

a linen cloth, he maketh seven other crosses in the same, and within

one only. After saying certen Psalmes, he taketh a payre of sensours and

senseth the bel within, and prayeth God to sende it good lucke. In many

places they make a great dyner, and kepe a feast as it were at a solemne

wedding."(239)

(239) Sleiden's Commentaries, English translation, as above, fol. 334

(lib. xxi, sub anno 1549).

These bell baptisms became matters of great importance. Popes, kings,

and prelates were proud to stand as sponsors. Four of the bells at

the Cathedral of Versailles having been destroyed during the French

Revolution, four new ones were baptized, on the 6th of January, 1824,

the Voltairean King, Louis XVIII, and the pious Duchess d'Angouleme

standing as sponsors.

In some of these ceremonies zeal appears to have outrun knowledge, and

one of Luther's stories, at the expense of the older Church, was that

certain authorities thus christened a bell "Hosanna," supposing that to

be the name of a woman.

To add to the efficacy of such baptisms, water was sometimes brought

from the river Jordan.(240)

(240) See Montanus, as above, who cites Beck, Lutherthum vor Luthero,

p. 294, for the statement that many bells were carried to the Jordan by

pilgrims for this purpose.

The prayers used at bell baptisms fully recognise this doctrine. The

ritual of Paris embraces the petition that, "whensoever this bell

shall sound, it shall drive away the malign influences of the assailing

spirits, the horror of their apparitions, the rush of whirlwinds, the

stroke of lightning, the harm of thunder, the disasters of storms, and

all the spirits of the tempest." Another prayer begs that "the sound of

this bell may put to flight the fiery darts of the enemy of men"; and

others vary the form but not the substance of this petition. The great

Jesuit theologian, Bellarmin, did indeed try to deny the reality of this

baptism; but this can only be regarded as a piece of casuistry suited

to Protestant hardness of heart, or as strategy in the warfare against

heretics.(241)

(241) For prayers at bell baptisms, see Arago, Oeuvres, Paris, 1854,

vol. iv, p. 322.

Forms of baptism were laid down in various manuals sanctioned directly

by papal authority, and sacramental efficacy was everywhere taken for

granted.(242) The development of this idea in the older Church was too

strong to be resisted;(243) but, as a rule, the Protestant theologians

of the Reformation, while admitting that storms were caused by Satan

and his legions, opposed the baptism of bells, and denied the theory of

their influence in dispersing storms. Luther, while never doubting that

troublesome meteorological phenomena were caused by devils, regarded

with contempt the idea that the demons were so childish as to be scared

by the clang of bells; his theory made them altogether too powerful to

be affected by means so trivial. The great English Reformers, while also

accepting very generally the theory of diabolic interference in storms,

reproved strongly the baptizing of bells, as the perversion of a

sacrament and involving blasphemy. Bishop Hooper declared reliance upon

bells to drive away tempests, futile. Bishop Pilkington, while arguing

that tempests are direct instruments of God's wrath, is very severe

against using "unlawful means," and among these he names "the hallowed

bell"; and these opinions were very generally shared by the leading

English clergy.(244)

(242) As has often been pointed out, the ceremony was in all its

details--even to the sponsors, the wrapping a garment about the

baptised, the baptismal fee, the feast--precisely the same as when a

child was baptised. Magius, who is no sceptic, relates from his own

experience an instant of this sort, where a certain bishop stood sponsor

for two bells, giving them both his own name--William. (See his De

Tintinnabulis, vol. xiv.)

(243) And no wonder, when the oracle of the Church, Thomas Aquinas,

expressly pronounced church bells, "provided they have been duly

consecrated and baptised," the foremost means of "frustrating the

atmospheric mischiefs of the devil," and likened steeples in which

bells are ringing to a hen brooding her chickens, "for the tones of the

consecrated metal repel the demons and avert storm and lightning"; when

pre-Reformation preachers of such universal currency as Johannes Herolt

declared, "Bells, as all agree, are baptised with the result that they

are secure from the power of Satan, terrify the demons, compel the

powers"; when Geiler of Kaiserberg especially commended bell-ringing

as a means of beating off the devil in storms; and when a canonist

like Durandus explained the purpose of the rite to be, that "the demons

hearing the trumpets of the Eternal King, to wit, the bells, may flee

in terror, and may cease from the stirring up of tempests." See Herolt,

Sermones Discipuli, vol. xvii, and Durandus, De ritibus ecclesiae, vol.

ii, p. 12. I owe the first of these citations to Rydberg, and the others

to Montanus. For Geiler, see Dacheux, Geiler de Kaiserberg, pp. 280,

281.

(244) The baptism of bells was indeed, one of the express complaints

of the German Protestant princes at the Reformation. See their Gravam.

Cent. German. Grav., p. 51. For Hooper, see his Early Writings, p. 197

(in Parker Society Publications). For Pilkington, see his Works, p.

177 (in same). Among others sharing these opinions were Tyndale, Bishop

Ridley, Archbishop Sandys, Becon, Calfhill, and Rogers. It is to be

noted that all of these speak of the rite as "baptism."

Toward the end of the sixteenth century the Elector of Saxony strictly

forbade the ringing of bells against storms, urging penance and prayer

instead; but the custom was not so easily driven out of the Protestant

Church, and in some quarters was developed a Protestant theory of a

rationalistic sort, ascribing the good effects of bell-ringing in storms

to the calling together of the devout for prayer or to the suggestion

of prayers during storms at night. As late as the end of the seventeenth

century we find the bells of Protestant churches in northern Germany

rung for the dispelling of tempests. In Catholic Austria this

bell-ringing seems to have become a nuisance in the last century, for

the Emperor Joseph II found it necessary to issue an edict against

it; but this doctrine had gained too large headway to be arrested by

argument or edict, and the bells may be heard ringing during storms to

this day in various remote districts in Europe.(245) For this was no

mere superficial view. It was really part of a deep theological current

steadily developed through the Middle Ages, the fundamental idea of the

whole being the direct influence of the bells upon the "Power of the

Air"; and it is perhaps worth our while to go back a little and glance

over the coming of this current into the modern world. Having grown

steadily through the Middle Ages, it appeared in full strength at

the Reformation period; and in the sixteenth century Olaus Magnus,

Archbishop of Upsala and Primate of Sweden, in his great work on the

northern nations, declares it a well-established fact that cities and

harvests may be saved from lightning by the ringing of bells and the

burning of consecrated incense, accompanied by prayers; and he cautions

his readers that the workings of the thunderbolt are rather to be

marvelled at than inquired into. Even as late as 1673 the Franciscan

professor Lealus, in Italy, in a schoolbook which was received with

great applause in his region, taught unhesitatingly the agency of

demons in storms, and the power of bells over them, as well as the

portentousness of comets and the movement of the heavens by angels.

He dwells especially, too, upon the perfect protection afforded by the

waxen Agnus Dei. How strong this current was, and how difficult even for

philosophical minds to oppose, is shown by the fact that both Descartes

and Francis Bacon speak of it with respect, admitting the fact, and

suggesting very mildly that the bells may accomplish this purpose by the

concussion of the air.(246)

(245) For Elector of Saxony, see Peuchen, Disp. circa tempestates,

Jena, 1697. For the Protestant theory of bells, see, e. g., the Ciciones

Selectae of Superintendent Conrad Dieterich (cited by Peuchen, Disp.

circa tempestates). For Protestant ringing of bells to dispel tempests,

see Schwimmer, Physicalische Luftfragen, 1692 (cited by Peuchen, as

above). He pictures the whole population of a Thuringinian district

flocking to the churches on the approach of a storm.

(246) For Olaus Magnus, see the De gentibus septentrionalibus (Rome,

1555), lib. i, c. 12, 13. For Descartes, see his De meteor., cent.

2, 127. In his Historia Ventorum he again alludes to the belief, and

without comment.

But no such moderate doctrine sufficed, and the renowned Bishop

Binsfeld, of Treves, in his noted treatise on the credibility of the

confessions of witches, gave an entire chapter to the effect of bells in

calming atmospheric disturbances. Basing his general doctrine upon the

first chapter of Job and the second chapter of Ephesians, he insisted

on the reality of diabolic agency in storms; and then, by theological

reasoning, corroborated by the statements extorted in the torture

chamber, he showed the efficacy of bells in putting the hellish legions

to flight.(247) This continued, therefore, an accepted tenet,

developed in every nation, and coming to its climax near the end of the

seventeenth century. At that period--the period of Isaac Newton--Father

Augustine de Angelis, rector of the Clementine College at Rome,

published under the highest Church authority his lectures upon

meteorology. Coming from the centre of Catholic Christendom, at so late

a period, they are very important as indicating what had been developed

under the influence of theology during nearly seventeen hundred years.

This learned head of a great college at the heart of Christendom taught

that "the surest remedy against thunder is that which our Holy Mother

the Church practises, namely, the ringing of bells when a thunderbolt

impends: thence follows a twofold effect, physical and moral--a

physical, because the sound variously disturbs and agitates the air, and

by agitation disperses the hot exhalations and dispels the thunder; but

the moral effect is the more certain, because by the sound the faithful

are stirred to pour forth their prayers, by which they win from God the

turning away of the thunderbolt." Here we see in this branch of thought,

as in so many others, at the close of the seventeenth century, the dawn

of rationalism. Father De Angelis now keeps demoniacal influence in

the background. Little, indeed, is said of the efficiency of bells in

putting to flight the legions of Satan: the wise professor is evidently

preparing for that inevitable compromise which we see in the history of

every science when it is clear that it can no longer be suppressed by

ecclesiastical fulminations.(248)

(247) See Binsfeld, De Confessionbus Malef., pp. 308-314, edition of

1623.

(248) For De Angelis, see his Lectiones Meteorol., p. 75.

III. THE AGENCY OF WITCHES.

But, while this comparatively harmless doctrine of thwarting the powers

of the air by fetiches and bell-ringing was developed, there were

evolved another theory, and a series of practices sanctioned by the

Church, which must forever be considered as among the most fearful

calamities in human history. Indeed, few errors have ever cost so much

shedding of innocent blood over such wide territory and during so many

generations. Out of the old doctrine--pagan and Christian--of evil

agency in atmospheric phenomena was evolved the belief that certain men,

women, and children may secure infernal aid to produce whirlwinds, hail,

frosts, floods, and the like.

As early as the ninth century one great churchman, Agobard, Archbishop

of Lyons, struck a heavy blow at this superstition. His work, Against

the Absurd Opinion of the Vulgar touching Hail and Thunder, shows him

to have been one of the most devoted apostles of right reason whom human

history has known. By argument and ridicule, and at times by a

lofty eloquence, he attempted to breast this tide. One passage is of

historical significance. He declares: "The wretched world lies now under

the tyranny of foolishness; things are believed by Christians of

such absurdity as no one ever could aforetime induce the heathen to

believe."(249)

(249) For a very interesting statement of Agobard's position and

work, with citations from his Liber contra insulsam vulgi opinionem

de grandine et tonitruis, see Poole, Illustrations of the History of

Mediaeval Thought, pp. 40 et seq. The works of Agobard are in vol. civ

of Migne's Patrol. Lat.

All in vain; the tide of superstition continued to roll on; great

theologians developed it and ecclesiastics favoured it; until as we near

the end of the medieval period the infallible voice of Rome is heard

accepting it, and clinching this belief into the mind of Christianity.

For, in 1437, Pope Eugene IV, by virtue of the teaching power conferred

on him by the Almighty, and under the divine guarantee against any

possible error in the exercise of it, issued a bull exhorting the

inquisitors of heresy and witchcraft to use greater diligence against

the human agents of the Prince of Darkness, and especially against those

who have the power to produce bad weather. In 1445 Pope Eugene returned

again to the charge, and again issued instructions and commands

infallibly committing the Church to the doctrine. But a greater than

Eugene followed, and stamped the idea yet more deeply into the mind of

the Church. On the 7th of December, 1484, Pope Innocent VIII sent forth

his bull Summis Desiderantes. Of all documents ever issued from Rome,

imperial or papal, this has doubtless, first and last, cost the greatest

shedding of innocent blood. Yet no document was ever more clearly

dictated by conscience. Inspired by the scriptural command, "Thou

shalt not suffer a witch to live," Pope Innocent exhorted the clergy of

Germany to leave no means untried to detect sorcerers, and especially

those who by evil weather destroy vineyards, gardens, meadows,

and growing crops. These precepts were based upon various texts of

Scripture, especially upon the famous statement in the book of Job; and,

to carry them out, witch-finding inquisitors were authorized by the Pope

to scour Europe, especially Germany, and a manual was prepared for their

use--the Witch-Hammer, Malleus Maleficarum. In this manual, which was

revered for centuries, both in Catholic and Protestant countries, as

almost divinely inspired, the doctrine of Satanic agency in atmospheric

phenomena was further developed, and various means of detecting and

punishing it were dwelt upon.(250)

(250) For the bull of Pope Eugene, see Raynaldus, Annales Eccl., pp.

1437, 1445. The Latin text of the bull Summis Desiderantes may now be

found in the Malleus Maleficarum, in Binsfeld's De Confessionibus cited

below, or in Roskoff's Geschichte des Teufles (Leipsic, 1869), vol.

i, pp. 222-225. There is, so far as I know, no good analysis, in any

English book, of the contents of the Witch-Hammer; but such may be

found in Roskoff's Geschichte des Teufels, or in Soldan's Geschichte der

Hexenprozesse. Its first dated edition is that of 1489; but Prof. Burr

has shown that it was printed as early as 1486. It was, happily, never

translated into any modern tongue.

With the application of torture to thousands of women, in accordance

with the precepts laid down in the Malleus, it was not difficult to

extract masses of proof for this sacred theory of meteorology. The poor

creatures, writhing on the rack, held in horror by those who had been

nearest and dearest to them, anxious only for death to relieve their

sufferings, confessed to anything and everything that would satisfy the

inquisitors and judges. All that was needed was that the inquisitors

should ask leading questions(251) and suggest satisfactory answers: the

prisoners, to shorten the torture, were sure sooner or later to give the

answer required, even though they knew that this would send them to the

stake or scaffold. Under the doctrine of "excepted cases," there was no

limit to torture for persons accused of heresy or witchcraft; even the

safeguards which the old pagan world had imposed upon torture were thus

thrown down, and the prisoner MUST confess.

(251) For still extant lists of such questions, see the Zeitschrift

fur deutsche Culturgeschichte for 1858, pp. 522-528, or Diefenbach,

Der Hexenwahn in Deutschland, pp. 15-17. Father Vincent of Berg (in his

Enchiridium) gives a similar list for use by priests in the confession

of the accused. Manuscript lists of this sort which have actually done

service in the courts of Baden and Bavaria may be seen in the library of

Cornell University.

The theological literature of the Middle Ages was thus enriched with

numberless statements regarding modes of Satanic influence on the

weather. Pathetic, indeed, are the records; and none more so than the

confessions of these poor creatures, chiefly women and children,

during hundreds of years, as to their manner of raising hailstorms and

tempests. Such confessions, by tens of thousands, are still to be found

in the judicial records of Germany, and indeed of all Europe. Typical

among these is one on which great stress was laid during ages, and for

which the world was first indebted to one of these poor women. Crazed by

the agony of torture, she declared that, returning with a demon through

the air from the witches' sabbath, she was dropped upon the earth in the

confusion which resulted among the hellish legions when they heard

the bells sounding the Ave Maria. It is sad to note that, after a

contribution so valuable to sacred science, the poor woman was condemned

to the flames. This revelation speedily ripened the belief that,

whatever might be going on at the witches' sabbath--no matter how

triumphant Satan might be--at the moment of sounding the consecrated

bells the Satanic power was paralyzed. This theory once started, proofs

came in to support it, during a hundred years, from the torture chambers

in all parts of Europe.

Throughout the later Middle Ages the Dominicans had been the main agents

in extorting and promulgating these revelations, but in the centuries

following the Reformation the Jesuits devoted themselves with even

more keenness and vigour to the same task. Some curious questions

incidentally arose. It was mooted among the orthodox authorities whether

the damage done by storms should or should not be assessed upon the

property of convicted witches. The theologians inclined decidedly to the

affirmative; the jurists, on the whole, to the negative.(252)

(252) For proofs of the vigour of the Jesuits in this persecution, see

not only the histories of witchcraft, but also the Annuae litterae of

the Jesuits themselves, passim.

In spite of these tortures, lightning and tempests continued, and great

men arose in the Church throughout Europe in every generation to point

out new cruelties for the discovery of "weather-makers," and new methods

for bringing their machinations to naught.

But here and there, as early as the sixteenth century, we begin to see

thinkers endeavouring to modify or oppose these methods. At that time

Paracelsus called attention to the reverberation of cannon as explaining

the rolling of thunder, but he was confronted by one of his greatest

contemporaries. Jean Bodin, as superstitious in natural as he was

rational in political science, made sport of the scientific theory,

and declared thunder to be "a flaming exhalation set in motion by evil

spirits, and hurled downward with a great crash and a horrible smell

of sulphur." In support of this view, he dwelt upon the confessions

of tortured witches, upon the acknowledged agency of demons in the

Will-o'-the-wisp, and specially upon the passage in the one hundred and

fourth Psalm, "Who maketh his angels spirits, his ministers a flaming

fire."

To resist such powerful arguments by such powerful men was dangerous

indeed. In 1513, Pomponatius, professor at Padua, published a volume

of Doubts as to the Fourth Book of Aristotle's Meteorologica, and also

dared to question this power of devils; but he soon found it advisable

to explain that, while as a PHILOSOPHER he might doubt, yet as

a CHRISTIAN he of course believed everything taught by Mother

Church--devils and all--and so escaped the fate of several others

who dared to question the agency of witches in atmospheric and other

disturbances.