Yet not even then without a sore struggle against unreason. And it

must here be noticed that this unreason was not all theological. The

unreasoning heterodox when intrusted with irresponsible power can be as

short-sighted and cruel as the unreasoning orthodox. Lavoisier, one of

the best of our race, not only a great chemist but a true man, was

sent to the scaffold by the Parisian mob, led by bigoted "liberals" and

atheists, with the sneer that the republic had no need of savants. As

to Priestley, who had devoted his life to science and to every good

work among his fellow-men, the Birmingham mob, favoured by the Anglican

clergymen who harangued them as "fellow-churchmen," wrecked his house,

destroyed his library, philosophical instruments, and papers containing

the results of long years of scientific research, drove him into exile,

and would have murdered him if they could have laid their hands upon

him. Nor was it entirely his devotion to rational liberty, nor even

his disbelief in the doctrine of the Trinity, which brought on this

catastrophe. That there was a deep distrust of his scientific pursuits,

was evident when the leaders of the mob took pains to use his electrical

apparatus to set fire to his papers.

Still, though theological modes of thought continued to sterilize much

effort in chemistry, the old influence was more and more thrown off,

and truth sought more and more for truth's sake. "Black magic" with

its Satanic machinery vanished, only reappearing occasionally

among marvel-mongers and belated theologians. "White magic" became

legerdemain.

In the early years of the nineteenth century, physical research,

though it went on with ever-increasing vigour, felt in various ways the

reaction which followed the French Revolution. It was not merely under

the Bourbons and Hapsburgs that resistance was offered; even in

England the old spirit lingered long. As late as 1832, when the British

Association for the Advancement of Science first visited Oxford, no

less amiable a man than John Keble--at that time a power in the

university--condemned indignantly the conferring of honorary degrees

upon the leading men thus brought together. In a letter of that date to

Dr. Pusey he complained bitterly, to use his own words, that "the Oxford

doctors have truckled sadly to the spirit of the times in receiving the

hotchpotch of philosophers as they did." It is interesting to know that

among the men thus contemptuously characterized were Brewster, Faraday,

and Dalton.

Nor was this a mere isolated exhibition of feeling; it lasted many

years, and was especially shown on both sides of the Atlantic in all

higher institutions of learning where theology was dominant. Down to a

period within the memory of men still in active life, students in the

sciences, not only at Oxford and Cambridge but at Harvard and Yale, were

considered a doubtful if not a distinctly inferior class, intellectually

and socially--to be relegated to different instructors and buildings,

and to receive their degrees on a different occasion and with different

ceremonies from those appointed for students in literature. To the

State University of Michigan, among the greater American institutions of

learning which have never possessed or been possessed by a theological

seminary, belongs the honour of first breaking down this wall of

separation.

But from the middle years of the century chemical science progressed

with ever-accelerating force, and the work of Bunsen, Kirchhoff,

Dalton, and Faraday has, in the last years of the century, led up to

the establishment of Mendeleef's law, by which chemistry has become

predictive, as astronomy had become predictive by the calculations of

Newton, and biology by the discoveries of Darwin.

While one succession of strong men were thus developing chemistry out

of one form of magic, another succession were developing physics out of

another form.

First in this latter succession may be mentioned that line of thinkers

who divined and reasoned out great physical laws--a line extending

from Galileo and Kepler and Newton to Ohm and Faraday and Joule and

Helmholtz. These, by revealing more and more clearly the reign of law,

steadily undermined the older theological view of arbitrary influence

in nature. Next should be mentioned the line of profound observers, from

Galileo and Torricelli to Kelvin. These have as thoroughly undermined

the old theologic substitution of phrases for facts. When Galileo

dropped the differing weights from the Leaning Tower of Pisa, he began

the end of Aristotelian authority in physics. When Torricelli balanced a

column of mercury against a column of water and each of these against

a column of air, he ended the theologic phrase that "nature abhors a

vacuum." When Newton approximately determined the velocity of sound, he

ended the theologic argument that we see the flash before we hear the

roar because "sight is nobler than hearing." When Franklin showed that

lightning is caused by electricity, and Ohm and Faraday proved that

electricity obeys ascertained laws, they ended the theological idea of a

divinity seated above the clouds and casting thunderbolts.

Resulting from the labour of both these branches of physical science,

we have the establishment of the great laws of the indestructibility

of matter, the correlation of forces, and chemical affinity. Thereby is

ended, with various other sacred traditions, the theological theory of

a visible universe created out of nothing, so firmly imbedded in

the theological thought of the Middle Ages and in the Westminster

Catechism.(283)

(283) For a reappearance of the fundamental doctrines of black magic

among theologians, see Rev. Dr. Jewett, Professor of Pastoral Theology

in the Prot. Episc. Gen. Theolog. Seminary of New York, Diabolology: The

Person and the Kingdom of Satan, New York, 1889. For their appearance

among theosophists, see Eliphas Levi, Histoire de la Magie, especially

the final chapters. For opposition to Boyle and chemistry studies at

Oxford in the latter half of the seventeenth century, see the address

of Prof. Dixon, F. R. S., before the British Association, 1894. For the

recent progress of chemistry, and opposition to its earlier development

at Oxford, see Lord Salisbury's address as President of the British

Association, in 1894. For the Protestant survival of the mediaeval

assertion that the universe was created out of nothing, see the

Westminster Catechism, question 15.

In our own time some attempt has been made to renew this war against

the physical sciences. Joseph de Maistre, uttering his hatred of them,

declaring that mankind has paid too dearly for them, asserting that they

must be subjected to theology, likening them to fire--good when confined

and dangerous when scattered about--has been one of the main leaders

among those who can not relinquish the idea that our body of sacred

literature should be kept a controlling text-book of science. The only

effect of such teachings has been to weaken the legitimate hold of

religion upon men.

In Catholic countries exertion has of late years been mainly confined to

excluding science or diluting it in university teachings. Early in the

present century a great effort was made by Ferdinand VII of Spain.

He simply dismissed the scientific professors from the University of

Salamanca, and until a recent period there has been general exclusion

from Spanish universities of professors holding to the Newtonian

physics. So, too, the contemporary Emperor of Austria attempted

indirectly something of the same sort; and at a still later period

Popes Gregory XVI and Pius IX discouraged, if they did not forbid, the

meetings of scientific associations in Italy. In France, war between

theology and science, which had long been smouldering, came in the years

1867 and 1868 to an outbreak. Toward the end of the last century, after

the Church had held possession of advanced instruction for more than

a thousand years, and had, so far as it was able, kept experimental

science in servitude--after it had humiliated Buffon in natural science,

thrown its weight against Newton in the physical sciences, and wrecked

Turgot's noble plans for a system of public instruction--the French

nation decreed the establishment of the most thorough and complete

system of higher instruction in science ever known. It was kept under

lay control and became one of the glories of France; but, emboldened by

the restoration of the Bourbons in 1815, the Church began to undermine

this hated system, and in 1868 had made such progress that all was ready

for the final assault.

Foremost among the leaders of the besieging party was the Bishop of

Orleans, Dupanloup, a man of many winning characteristics and of great

oratorical power. In various ways, and especially in an open letter, he

had fought the "materialism" of science at Paris, and especially were

his attacks levelled at Profs. Vulpian and See and the Minister of

Public instruction, Duruy, a man of great merit, whose only crime was

devotion to the improvement of education and to the promotion of the

highest research in science.(284)

(284) For the exertions of the restored Bourbons to crush the

universities of Spain, see Hubbard, Hist. Contemporaine de l'Espagne,

Paris, 1878, chaps. i and ii. For Dupanloup, Lettre a un Cardinal, see

the Revue de Therapeutique of 1868, p. 221.

The main attack was made rather upon biological science than upon

physics and chemistry, yet it was clear that all were involved together.

The first onslaught was made in the French Senate, and the storming

party in that body was led by a venerable and conscientious prelate,

Cardinal de Bonnechose, Archbishop of Rouen. It was charged by him and

his party that the tendencies of the higher scientific teaching at Paris

were fatal to religion and morality. Heavy missiles were hurled--such

phrases as "sapping the foundations," "breaking down the bulwarks,"

and the like; and, withal, a new missile was used with much effect--the

epithet "materialist."

The results can be easily guessed: crowds came to the lecture-rooms of

the attacked professors, and the lecture-room of Prof. See, the chief

offender, was crowded to suffocation.

A siege was begun in due form. A young physician was sent by the

cardinal's party into the heterodox camp as a spy. Having heard one

lecture of Prof. See, he returned with information that seemed to

promise easy victory to the besieging party: he brought a terrible

statement--one that seemed enough to overwhelm See, Vulpian, Duruy, and

the whole hated system of public instruction in France--the statement

that See had denied the existence of the human soul.

Cardinal Bonnechose seized the tremendous weapon at once. Rising in his

place in the Senate, he launched a most eloquent invective against the

Minister of State who could protect such a fortress of impiety as the

College of Medicine; and, as a climax, he asserted, on the evidence

of his spy fresh from Prof. See's lecture-room, that the professor had

declared, in his lecture of the day before, that so long as he had the

honour to hold his professorship he would combat the false idea of the

existence of the soul. The weapon seemed resistless and the wound fatal,

but M. Duruy rose and asked to be heard.

His statement was simply that he held in his hand documentary proofs

that Prof. See never made such a declaration. He held the notes used by

Prof. See in his lecture. Prof. See, it appeared, belonged to a school

in medical science which combated certain ideas regarding medicine as an

ART. The inflamed imagination of the cardinal's heresy-hunting emissary

had, as the lecture-notes proved, led him to mistake the word "art" for

"ame," and to exhibit Prof. See as treating a theological when he was

discussing a purely scientific question. Of the existence of the soul

the professor had said nothing.

The forces of the enemy were immediately turned; they retreated in

confusion, amid the laughter of all France; and a quiet, dignified

statement as to the rights of scientific instructors by Wurtz, dean of

the faculty, completed their discomfiture. Thus a well-meant attempt

to check science simply ended in bringing ridicule on religion, and

in thrusting still deeper into the minds of thousands of men that most

mistaken of all mistaken ideas: the conviction that religion and science

are enemies.(285)

(285) For a general account of the Vulpian and See matter, see Revue des

Deux Mondes, 31 mai, 1868, "Chronique de la Quinzaine," pp. 763-765. As

to the result on popular thought, may be noted the following comment on

the affair by the Revue, which is as free as possible from anything

like rabid anti-ecclesiastical ideas: "Elle a ete vraiment curieuse,

instructive, assez triste et meme un peu amusante." For Wurtz's

statement, see Revue de Therapeutique for 1868, p. 303.

But justice forbids raising an outcry against Roman Catholicism for

this. In 1864 a number of excellent men in England drew up a declaration

to be signed by students in the natural sciences, expressing "sincere

regret that researches into scientific truth are perverted by some in

our time into occasion for casting doubt upon the truth and authenticity

of the Holy Scriptures." Nine tenths of the leading scientific men of

England refused to sign it; nor was this all: Sir John Herschel, Sir

John Bowring, and Sir W. R. Hamilton administered, through the press,

castigations which roused general indignation against the proposers of

the circular, and Prof. De Morgan, by a parody, covered memorial and

memorialists with ridicule. It was the old mistake, and the old result

followed in the minds of multitudes of thoughtful young men.(286)

(286) De Morgan, Paradoxes, pp. 421-428; also Daubeny's Essays.

And in yet another Protestant country this same mistake was made. In

1868 several excellent churchmen in Prussia thought it their duty to

meet for the denunciation of "science falsely so called." Two results

followed: upon the great majority of these really self-sacrificing

men--whose first utterances showed complete ignorance of the theories

they attacked--there came quiet and widespread contempt; upon Pastor

Knak, who stood forth and proclaimed views of the universe which he

thought scriptural, but which most schoolboys knew to be childish,

came a burst of good-natured derision from every quarter of the German

nation.(287)

(287) See the Berlin newspapers for the summer of 1868, especially

Kladderdatsch.

But in all the greater modern nations warfare of this kind, after the

first quarter of the nineteenth century, became more and more futile.

While conscientious Roman bishops, and no less conscientious Protestant

clergymen in Europe and America continued to insist that advanced

education, not only in literature but in science, should be kept under

careful control in their own sectarian universities and colleges,

wretchedly one-sided in organization and inadequate in equipment; while

Catholic clerical authorities in Spain were rejecting all professors

holding the Newtonian theory, and in Austria and Italy all holding

unsafe views regarding the Immaculate Conception, and while Protestant

clerical authorities in Great Britain and America were keeping out

of professorships men holding unsatisfactory views regarding the

Incarnation, or Infant Baptism, or the Apostolic Succession, or

Ordination by Elders, or the Perseverance of the Saints; and while both

Catholic and Protestant ecclesiastics were openly or secretly weeding

out of university faculties all who showed willingness to consider

fairly the ideas of Darwin, a movement was quietly in progress destined

to take instruction, and especially instruction in the physical

and natural sciences, out of its old subordination to theology and

ecclesiasticism.(288)

(288) Whatever may be thought of the system of philosophy advocated by

President McCosh at Princeton, every thinking man must honor him for the

large way in which he, at least, broke away from the traditions of that

centre of thought; prevented, so far as he was able, persecution of

scholars for holding to the Darwinian view; and paved the way for the

highest researches in physical science in that university. For a most

eloquent statement of the opposition of modern physical science to

mediaeval theological views, as shown in the case of Sir Isaac Newton,

see Dr. Thomas Chalmers, cited in Gore, Art of Scientific Discovery,

London, 1878, p. 247.

The most striking beginnings of this movement had been seen when, in the

darkest period of the French Revolution, there was founded at Paris the

great Conservatory of Arts and Trades, and when, in the early years

of the nineteenth century, scientific and technical education spread

quietly upon the Continent. By the middle of the century France and

Germany were dotted with well-equipped technical and scientific schools,

each having chemical and physical laboratories.

The English-speaking lands lagged behind. In England, Oxford and

Cambridge showed few if any signs of this movement, and in the United

States, down to 1850, evidences of it were few and feeble. Very

significant is it that, at that period, while Yale College had in

its faculty Silliman and Olmsted--the professor of chemistry and the

professor of physics most widely known in the United States--it had no

physical or chemical laboratory in the modern sense, and confined its

instruction in these subjects to examinations upon a text-book and the

presentation of a few lectures. At the State University of Michigan,

which had even then taken a foremost place in the higher education west

of the Great Lakes, there was very meagre instruction in chemistry and

virtually none in physics. This being the state of things in the middle

of the century in institutions remarkably free from clerical control,

it can be imagined what was the position of scientific instruction in

smaller colleges and universities where theological considerations were

entirely dominant.

But in 1851, with the International Exhibition at London, began in Great

Britain and America a movement in favour of scientific education; men

of wealth and public spirit began making contributions to them, and thus

came the growth of a new system of instruction in which Chemistry and

Physics took just rank.

By far the most marked feature in this movement was seen in America,

when, in 1857, Justin S. Morrill, a young member of Congress from

Vermont, presented the project of a law endowing from the public lands

a broad national system of colleges in which scientific and technical

studies should be placed on an equality with studies in classical

literature, one such college to be established in every State of the

Union. The bill, though opposed mainly by representatives from the

Southern States, where doctrinaire politics and orthodox theology were

in strong alliance with negro slavery, was passed by both Houses of

Congress, but vetoed by President Buchanan, in whom the doctrinaire and

orthodox spirit was incarnate. But Morrill persisted and again presented

his bill, which was again carried in spite of the opposition of the

Southern members, and again vetoed in 1859 by President Buchanan. Then

came the civil war; but Morrill and his associates did not despair of

the republic. In the midst of all the measures for putting vast armies

into the field and for saving the Union from foreign interference as

well as from domestic anarchy, they again passed the bill, and in 1862,

in the darkest hour of the struggle for national existence, it became a

law by the signature of President Lincoln.

And here it should not be unrecorded, that, while the vast majority of

the supporters of the measure were laymen, most efficient service was

rendered by a clergyman, the Rev. Dr. Amos Brown, born in New Hampshire,

but at that time an instructor in a little village of New York. His

ideas were embodied in the bill, and his efforts did much for its

passage.

Thus was established, in every State of the American Union, at least one

institution in which scientific and technical studies were given equal

rank with classical, and promoted by laboratories for research in

physical and natural science. Of these institutions there are now nearly

fifty: all have proved valuable, and some of them, by the addition of

splendid gifts from individuals and from the States in which they are

situated, have been developed into great universities.

Nor was this all. Many of the older universities and colleges thus

received a powerful stimulus in the new direction. The great physical

and chemical laboratories founded by gifts from public-spirited

individuals, as at Harvard, Yale, and Chicago, or by enlightened State

legislators, as in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, California, Kansas,

and Nebraska, have also become centres from which radiate influences

favouring the unfettered search for truth as truth.

This system has been long enough in operation to enable us to note in

some degree its effects on religion, and these are certainly such as

to relieve those who have feared that religion was necessarily bound up

with the older instruction controlled by theology. While in Europe, by a

natural reaction, the colleges under strict ecclesiastical control have

sent forth the most powerful foes the Christian Church has ever known,

of whom Voltaire and Diderot and Volney and Sainte-Beuve and Renan are

types, no such effects have been noted in these newer institutions.

While the theological way of looking at the universe has steadily

yielded, there has been no sign of any tendency toward irreligion. On

the contrary, it is the testimony of those best acquainted with the

American colleges and universities during the last forty-five years that

there has been in them a great gain, not only as regards morals, but as

regards religion in its highest and best sense. The reason is not far

to seek. Under the old American system the whole body of students at

a university were confined to a single course, for which the majority

cared little and very many cared nothing, and, as a result, widespread

idleness and dissipation were inevitable. Under the new system,

presenting various courses, and especially courses in various sciences,

appealing to different tastes and aims, the great majority of students

are interested, and consequently indolence and dissipation have steadily

diminished. Moreover, in the majority of American institutions of

learning down to the middle of the century, the main reliance for the

religious culture of students was in the perfunctory presentation of

sectarian theology, and the occasional stirring up of what were called

"revivals," which, after a period of unhealthy stimulus, inevitably left

the main body of students in a state of religious and moral reaction

and collapse. This method is now discredited, and in the more important

American universities it has become impossible. Religious truth, to

secure the attention of the modern race of students in the better

American institutions, is presented, not by "sensation preachers," but

by thoughtful, sober-minded scholars. Less and less avail sectarian

arguments; more and more impressive becomes the presentation of

fundamental religious truths. The result is, that while young men care

less and less for the great mass of petty, cut-and-dried sectarian

formulas, they approach the deeper questions of religion with increasing

reverence.

While striking differences exist between the European universities and

those of the United States, this at least may be said, that on both

sides of the Atlantic the great majority of the leading institutions

of learning are under the sway of enlightened public opinion as voiced

mainly by laymen, and that, this being the case, the physical and

natural sciences are henceforth likely to be developed normally,

and without fear of being sterilized by theology or oppressed by

ecclesiasticism.

CHAPTER XIII. FROM MIRACLES TO MEDICINE.

I. THE EARLY AND SACRED THEORIES OF DISEASE.

Nothing in the evolution of human thought appears more inevitable than

the idea of supernatural intervention in producing and curing disease.

The causes of disease are so intricate that they are reached only after

ages of scientific labour. In those periods when man sees everywhere

miracle and nowhere law,--when he attributes all things which he can not

understand to a will like his own,--he naturally ascribes his diseases

either to the wrath of a good being or to the malice of an evil being.

This idea underlies the connection of the priestly class with the

healing art: a connection of which we have survivals among rude tribes

in all parts of the world, and which is seen in nearly every ancient

civilization--especially in the powers over disease claimed in Egypt by

the priests of Osiris and Isis, in Assyria by the priests of Gibil, in

Greece by the priests of Aesculapius, and in Judea by the priests and

prophets of Jahveh.

In Egypt there is evidence, reaching back to a very early period, that

the sick were often regarded as afflicted or possessed by demons; the

same belief comes constantly before us in the great religions of India

and China; and, as regards Chaldea, the Assyrian tablets recovered in

recent years, while revealing the source of so many myths and legends

transmitted to the modern world through the book of Genesis, show

especially this idea of the healing of diseases by the casting out of

devils. A similar theory was elaborated in Persia. Naturally, then, the

Old Testament, so precious in showing the evolution of religious and

moral truth among men, attributes such diseases as the leprosy of Miriam

and Uzziah, the boils of Job, the dysentery of Jehoram, the withered

hand of Jeroboam, the fatal illness of Asa, and many other ills, to the

wrath of God or the malice of Satan; while, in the New Testament, such

examples as the woman "bound by Satan," the rebuke of the fever, the

casting out of the devil which was dumb, the healing of the person whom

"the devil ofttimes casteth into the fire"--of which case one of

the greatest modern physicians remarks that never was there a truer

description of epilepsy--and various other episodes, show this same

inevitable mode of thought as a refracting medium through which the

teachings and doings of the Great Physician were revealed to future

generations.

In Greece, though this idea of an occult evil agency in producing bodily

ills appeared at an early period, there also came the first beginnings,

so far as we know, of a really scientific theory of medicine. Five

hundred years before Christ, in the bloom period of thought--the

period of Aeschylus, Phidias, Pericles, Socrates, and Plato--appeared

Hippocrates, one of the greatest names in history. Quietly but

thoroughly he broke away from the old tradition, developed scientific

thought, and laid the foundations of medical science upon experience,

observation, and reason so deeply and broadly that his teaching remains

to this hour among the most precious possessions of our race.

His thought was passed on to the School of Alexandria, and there medical

science was developed yet further, especially by such men as Herophilus

and Erasistratus. Under their lead studies in human anatomy began by

dissection; the old prejudice which had weighed so long upon science,

preventing that method of anatomical investigation without which there

can be no real results, was cast aside apparently forever.(289)

(289) For extended statements regarding medicine in Egypt, Judea, and

Eastern nations generally, see Sprengel, Histoire de la Medecine, and

Haeser; and for more succinct accounts, Baas, Geschichte der Medicin,

pp. 15-29; also Isensee; also Fredault, Histoire de la Medecine, chap.

i. For the effort in Egyptian medicine to deal with demons and witches,

see Heinrich Brugsch, Die Aegyptologie, Leipsic, 1891, p. 77; and for

references to the Papyrus Ebers, etc., pp. 155, 407, and following. For

fear of dissection and prejudices against it in Egypt, like those in

mediaeval Europe, see Maspero and Sayce, Dawn of Civilization, p. 216.

For the derivation of priestly medicine in Egypt, see Baas, pp. 16, 22.

For the fame of Egyptian medicine at Rome, see Sharpe, History of Egypt,

vol. ii, pp. 151, 184. For Assyria, see especially George Smith in

Delitzsch's German translation, p. 34, and F. Delitzsch's appendix, p.

27. On the cheapness and commonness of miracles of healing in antiquity,

see Sharpe, quoting St. Jerome, vol. ii, pp. 276, 277. As to the

influence of Chaldean ideas of magic and disease, see Lecky, History of

European Morals, vol. i, p. 404 and note. But, on the other hand, see

reference in Homer to diseases caused by a "demon." For the evolution of

medicine before and after Hippocrates, see Sprengel. For a good summing

up of the work of Hippocrates, see Baas, p. 201. For the necessary

passage of medicine in its early stages under priestly control, see

Cabanis, The Revolution of Medical Science, London, 1806, chap. ii. On

Jewish ideas regarding demons, and their relation to sickness, see Toy,

Judaism and Christianity, Boston, 1891, pp. 168 et seq. For avoidance

of dissections of human subjects even by Galen and his disciples, see

Maurice Albert, Les Medecins Grecs a Rome, Paris, 1894, chap. xi. For

Herophilus, Erasistratus, and the School of Alexandria, see Sprengel,

vol. i, pp. 433, 434 et seq.

But with the coming in of Christianity a great new chain of events

was set in motion which modified this development most profoundly. The

influence of Christianity on the healing art was twofold: there was

first a blessed impulse--the thought, aspiration, example, ideals, and

spirit of Jesus of Nazareth. This spirit, then poured into the world,

flowed down through the ages, promoting self-sacrifice for the sick

and wretched. Through all those succeeding centuries, even through the

rudest, hospitals and infirmaries sprang up along this blessed stream.

Of these were the Eastern establishments for the cure of the sick at

the earliest Christian periods, the Infirmary of Monte Cassino and the

Hotel-Dieu at Lyons in the sixth century, the Hotel-Dieu at Paris in the

seventh, and the myriad refuges for the sick and suffering which sprang

up in every part of Europe during the following centuries. Vitalized by

this stream, all medieval growths of mercy bloomed luxuriantly. To

say nothing of those at an earlier period, we have in the time of the

Crusades great charitable organizations like the Order of St. John of

Jerusalem, and thenceforward every means of bringing the spirit of Jesus

to help afflicted humanity. So, too, through all those ages we have

a succession of men and women devoting themselves to works of mercy,

culminating during modern times in saints like Vincent de Paul, Francke,

Howard, Elizabeth Fry, Florence Nightingale, and Muhlenberg.

But while this vast influence, poured forth from the heart of the

Founder of Christianity, streamed through century after century,

inspiring every development of mercy, there came from those who

organized the Church which bears his name, and from those who afterward

developed and directed it, another stream of influence--a theology drawn

partly from prehistoric conceptions of unseen powers, partly from ideas

developed in the earliest historic nations, but especially from the

letter of the Hebrew and Christian sacred books.

The theology deveLoped out of our sacred literature in relation to the

cure of disease was mainly twofold: first, there was a new and strong

evolution of the old idea that physical disease is produced by the

wrath of God or the malice of Satan, or by a combination of both, which

theology was especially called in to explain; secondly, there were

evolved theories of miraculous methods of cure, based upon modes of

appeasing the Divine anger, or of thwarting Satanic malice.

Along both these streams of influence, one arising in the life of Jesus,

and the other in the reasonings of theologians, legends of miracles grew

luxuriantly. It would be utterly unphilosophical to attribute these as

a whole to conscious fraud. Whatever part priestcraft may have taken

afterward in sundry discreditable developments of them, the mass of

miraculous legends, Century after century, grew up mainly in good

faith, and as naturally as elms along water-courses or flowers upon the

prairie.

II. GROWTH OF LEGENDS OF HEALING.

--THE LIFE OF XAVIER AS A TYPICAL EXAMPLE.

Legends of miracles have thus grown about the lives of all great

benefactors of humanity in early ages, and about saints and devotees.

Throughout human history the lives of such personages, almost without

exception, have been accompanied or followed by a literature in

which legends of miraculous powers form a very important part--a part

constantly increasing until a different mode of looking at nature and

of weighing testimony causes miracles to disappear. While modern thought

holds the testimony to the vast mass of such legends in all ages as

worthless, it is very widely acknowledged that great and gifted beings

who endow the earth with higher religious ideas, gaining the deepest

hold upon the hearts and minds of multitudes, may at times exercise such

influence upon those about them that the sick in mind or body are helped

or healed.

We have within the modern period very many examples which enable us to

study the evolution of legendary miracles. Out of these I will select

but one, which is chosen because it is the life of one of the most

noble and devoted men in the history of humanity, one whose biography

is before the world with its most minute details--in his own letters,

in the letters of his associates, in contemporary histories, and in a

multitude of biographies: this man is St. Francis Xavier. From these

sources I draw the facts now to be given, but none of them are of

Protestant origin; every source from which I shall draw is Catholic and

Roman, and published under the sanction of the Church.

Born a Spanish noble, Xavier at an early age cast aside all ordinary

aims, devoted himself to study, was rapidly advanced to a professorship

at Paris, and in this position was rapidly winning a commanding

influence, when he came under the sway of another Spaniard even greater,

though less brilliantly endowed, than himself--Ignatius Loyola, founder

of the Society of Jesus. The result was that the young professor

sacrificed the brilliant career on which he had entered at the French

capital, went to the far East as a simple missionary, and there devoted

his remaining years to redeeming the lowest and most wretched of our

race.

Among the various tribes, first in lower India and afterward in Japan,

he wrought untiringly--toiling through village after village, collecting

the natives by the sound of a hand-bell, trying to teach them the

simplest Christian formulas; and thus he brought myriads of them to a

nominal Confession of the Christian faith. After twelve years of such

efforts, seeking new conquests for religion, he sacrificed his life on

the desert island of San Chan.

During his career as a missionary he wrote great numbers of letters,

which were preserved and have since been published; and these, with the

letters of his contemporaries, exhibit clearly all the features of his

life. His own writings are very minute, and enable us to follow him

fully. No account of a miracle wrought by him appears either in his own

letters or in any contemporary document.(290) At the outside, but two

or three things occurred in his whole life, as exhibited so fully by

himself and his contemporaries, for which the most earnest devotee could

claim anything like Divine interposition; and these are such as may be

read in the letters of very many fervent missionaries, Protestant as

well as Catholic. For example, in the beginning of his career, during a

journey in Europe with an ambassador, one of the servants in fording a

stream got into deep water and was in danger of drowning. Xavier tells

us that the ambassador prayed very earnestly, and that the man finally

struggled out of the stream. But within sixty years after his death, at

his canonization, and by various biographers, this had been magnified

into a miracle, and appears in the various histories dressed out in

glowing colours. Xavier tells us that the ambassador prayed for the

safety of the young man; but his biographers tell us that it was Xavier

who prayed, and finally, by the later writers, Xavier is represented as

lifting horse and rider out of the stream by a clearly supernatural act.

(290) This statement was denied with much explosive emphasis by a writer

in the Catholic World for September and October, 1891, but he brought

no FACT to support this denial. I may perhaps be allowed to remind the

reverend writer that since the days of Pascal, whose eminence in the

Church he will hardly dispute, the bare assertion even of a Jesuit

father against established facts needs some support other than mere

scurrility.

Still another claim to miracle is based upon his arriving at Lisbon

and finding his great colleague, Simon Rodriguez, ill of fever. Xavier

informs us in a very simple way that Rodriguez was so overjoyed to see

him that the fever did not return. This is entirely similar to the cure

which Martin Luther wrought upon Melanchthon. Melanchthon had broken

down and was supposed to be dying, when his joy at the long-delayed

visit of Luther brought him to his feet again, after which he lived for

many years.

Again, it is related that Xavier, finding a poor native woman very

ill, baptized her, saying over her the prayers of the Church, and she

recovered.

Two or three occurrences like these form the whole basis for the

miraculous account, so far as Xavier's own writings are concerned.

Of miracles in the ordinary sense of the word there is in these letters

of his no mention. Though he writes of his doings with especial detail,

taking evident pains to note everything which he thought a sign of

Divine encouragement, he says nothing of his performing miracles,

and evidently knows nothing of them. This is clearly not due to his

unwillingness to make known any token of Divine favour. As we have seen,

he is very prompt to report anything which may be considered an answer

to prayer or an evidence of the power of religious means to improve the

bodily or spiritual health of those to whom he was sent.

Nor do the letters of his associates show knowledge of any miracles

wrought by him. His brother missionaries, who were in constant and loyal

fellowship with him, make no allusions to them in their communications

with each other or with their brethren in Europe.

Of this fact we have many striking evidences. Various collections of

letters from the Jesuit missionaries in India and the East generally,

during the years of Xavier's activity, were published, and in not one of

these letters written during Xavier's lifetime appears any account of

a miracle wrought by him. As typical of these collections we may take

perhaps the most noted of all, that which was published about twenty

years after Xavier's death by a Jesuit father, Emanuel Acosta.

The letters given in it were written by Xavier and his associates not

only from Goa, which was the focus of all missionary effort and the

centre of all knowledge regarding their work in the East, but from

all other important points in the great field. The first of them were

written during the saint's lifetime, but, though filled with every sort

of detail regarding missionary life and work, they say nothing regarding

any miracles by Xavier.

The same is true of various other similar collections published during

the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In not one of them does any

mention of a miracle by Xavier appear in a letter from India or the East

contemporary with him.

This silence regarding his miracles was clearly not due to any "evil

heart of unbelief." On the contrary, these good missionary fathers were

prompt to record the slightest occurrence which they thought evidence of

the Divine favour: it is indeed touching to see how eagerly they grasp

at the most trivial things which could be thus construed.

Their ample faith was fully shown. One of them, in Acosta's collection,

sends a report that an illuminated cross had been recently seen in the

heavens; another, that devils had been cast out of the natives by the

use of holy water; another, that various cases of disease had been

helped and even healed by baptism; and sundry others sent reports that

the blind and dumb had been restored, and that even lepers had been

cleansed by the proper use of the rites of the Church; but to Xavier no

miracles are imputed by his associates during his life or during several

years after his death.

On the contrary, we find his own statements as to his personal

limitations, and the difficulties arising from them, fully confirmed

by his brother workers. It is interesting, for example, in view of the

claim afterward made that the saint was divinely endowed for his mission

with the "gift of tongues," to note in these letters confirmation of

Xavier's own statement utterly disproving the existence of any such

Divine gift, and detailing the difficulties which he encountered from

his want of knowing various languages, and the hard labour which he

underwent in learning the elements of the Japanese tongue.

Until about ten years after Xavier's death, then, as Emanuel Acosta's

publication shows, the letters of the missionaries continued without any

indication of miracles performed by the saint. Though, as we shall see

presently, abundant legends had already begun to grow elsewhere, not

one word regarding these miracles came as yet from the country which,

according to later accounts accepted and sanctioned by the Church, was

at this very period filled with miracles; not the slightest indication

of them from the men who were supposed to be in the very thick of these

miraculous manifestations.

But this negative evidence is by no means all. There is also positive

evidence--direct testimony from the Jesuit order itself--that Xavier

wrought no miracles.

For not only did neither Xavier nor his co-workers know anything of the

mighty works afterward attributed to him, but the highest contemporary

authority on the whole subject, a man in the closest correspondence with

those who knew most about the saint, a member of the Society of Jesus

in the highest standing and one of its accepted historians, not only

expressly tells us that Xavier wrought no miracles, but gives the

reasons why he wrought none.

This man was Joseph Acosta, a provincial of the Jesuit order, its

visitor in Aragon, superior at Valladolid, and finally rector of the

University of Salamanca. In 1571, nineteen years after Xavier's

death, Acosta devoted himself to writing a work mainly concerning the

conversion of the Indies, and in this he refers especially and with the

greatest reverence to Xavier, holding him up as an ideal and his work as

an example.

But on the same page with this tribute to the great missionary Acosta

goes on to discuss the reasons why progress in the world's conversion is

not so rapid as in the early apostolic times, and says that an especial

cause why apostolic preaching could no longer produce apostolic results

"lies in the missionaries themselves, because there is now no power of

working miracles." He then asks, "Why should our age be so completely

destitute of them?" This question he answers at great length, and one of

his main contentions is that in early apostolic times illiterate men had

to convert the learned of the world, whereas in modern times the case

is reversed, learned men being sent to convert the illiterate; and hence

that "in the early times miracles were necessary, but in our time they

are not."

This statement and argument refer, as we have seen, directly to Xavier

by name, and to the period covered by his activity and that of the other

great missionaries of his time. That the Jesuit order and the Church at

large thought this work of Acosta trustworthy is proved by the fact

that it was published at Salamanca a few years after it was written,

and republished afterward with ecclesiastical sanction in France.(291)

Nothing shows better than the sequel how completely the evolution of

miraculous accounts depends upon the intellectual atmosphere of any land

and time, and how independent it is of fact.

(291)The work of Joseph Acosta is in the Cornell University Library,

its title being as follows: De Natura Novi Orbis libri duo et De

Promulgatione Evangelii apud Barbaros, sive De Procuranda Indorum

Salute, libri sex, autore Jesepho Acosta, presbytero Societis Jesu. I.

H. S. Salmanticas, apud Guillelmum Foquel, MDLXXXIX. For the passages

cited directly contradicting the working of miracles by Xavier and his

associates, see lib. ii, cap. ix, of which the title runs, Cur

Miracula in Conversione gentium non fiant nunc, ut olim, a Christi

praedicatoribus, especially pp. 242-245; also lib. ii, cap. viii, pp.

237 et seq. For a passage which shows that Xavier was not then at all

credited with "the miraculous gift of tongues," see lib. i, cap. vii,

p. 173. Since writing the above, my attention has been called to the

alleged miraculous preservation of Xavier's body claimed in sundry

letters contemporary with its disinterment at San Chan and reinterment

at Goa. There is no reason why this preservation in itself need be

doubted, and no reason why it should be counted miraculous. Such

exceptional preservation of bodies has been common enough in all ages,

and, alas for the claims of the Church, quite as common of pagans or

Protestants as of good Catholics. One of the most famous cases is

that of the fair Roman maiden, Julia, daughter of Claudius, over whose

exhumation at Rome, in 1485, such ado was made by the sceptical scholars

of the Renaissance. Contemporary observers tell us enthusiastically that

she was very beautiful, perfectly preserved, "the bloom of youth still

upom her cheeks," and exhaling a "sweet odour"; but this enthusiasm was

so little to the taste of Pope Innocent VIII that he had her reburied

secretly by night. Only the other day, in June of the year 1895, there

was unearthed at Stade, in Hanover, the "perfectly preserved" body of

a soldier of the eighth century. So, too, I might mention the bodies

preserved at the church of St. Thomas at Strasburg, beneath the

Cathedral of Bremen, and elsewhere during hundreds of years past; also

the cases of "adiposeration" in various American cemeteries, which never

grow less wonderful by repetition from mouth to mouth and in the public

prints. But, while such preservation is not incredible or even strange,

there is much reason why precisely in the case of a saint like St.

Francis Xavier the evidence for it should be received with especial

caution. What the touching fidelity of disciples may lead them to

believe and proclaim regarding an adored leader in a time when faith

is thought more meritorious than careful statement, and miracle more

probable than the natural course of things, is seen, for example,

in similar pious accounts regarding the bodies of many other saints,

especially that of St. Carlo Borromeo, so justly venerated by the Church

for his beautiful and charitable life. And yet any one looking at the

relics of various saints, especially those of St. Carlo, preserved with

such tender care in the crypt of Milan Cathedral, will see that they

have shared the common fate, being either mummified or reduced to

skeletons; and this is true in all cases, as far as my observation has

extended. What even a great theologian can be induced to believe

and testify in a somewhat similar matter, is seen in St. Augustine's

declaration that the flesh of the peacock, which in antiquity and in the

early Church was considered a bird somewhat supernaturally endowed, is

incorruptible. The saint declares that he tested it and found it so (see

the De Civitate dei, xxi, c. 4, under the passage beginning Quis enim

Deus). With this we may compare the testimony of the pious author of

Sir John Mandeville's Travels, that iron floats upon the Dead Sea while

feathers sink in it, and that he would not have believed this had he not

seen it. So, too, testimony to the "sweet odour" diffused by the exhumed

remains of the saint seem to indicate feeling rather than fact--those

highly wrought feelings of disciples standing by--the same feeling which

led those who visited St. Simon Stylites on his heap of ordure, and

other hermits unwashed and living in filth, to dwell upon the delicious

"odour of sanctity" pervading the air. In point, perhaps, is Louis

Veuillot's idealization of the "parfum de Rome," in face of the fact, to

which the present writer and thousands of others can testify, that

under Papal rule Rome was materially one of the most filthy cities in

Christendom. For the case of Julia, see the contemporary letter printed

by Janitschek, Gesellschaft der Renaissance in Italien, p. 120, note

167; also Infessura, Diarium Rom. Urbis, in Muratori, tom. iii, pt. 2,

col. 1192, 1193, and elsewhere; also Symonds, Renaissance in Italy: Age

of Despots, p. 22. For the case at Stade, see press dispatch from Berlin

in newspapers of June 24, 25, 1895. The copy of Emanuel Acosta I have

mainly used is that in the Royal Library at Munich, De Japonicus rebus

epistolarum libri iii, item recogniti; et in Latinum ex Hispanico

sermone conversi, Dilingae, MDLXXI. I have since obtained and used the

work now in the library of Cornell University, being the letters and

commentary published by Emanuel Acosta and attached to Maffei's book on

the History of the Indies, published at Antwerp in 1685. For the first

beginnings of miracles wrought by Xavier, as given in the letters of

the missionaries, see that of Almeida, lib. ii, p. 183. Of other

collections, or selections from collections, of letters which fail to

give any indication of miracles wrought by Xavier during his life,

see Wytfliet and Magin, Histoire Universelle des Indes Occidentales et

Orientales, et de la Conversion des Indiens, Douay, 1611. Though several

letters of Xavier and his fellow-missionaries are given, dated at the

very period of his alleged miracles, not a trace of miracles appears in

these. Also Epistolae Japonicae de multorum in variis Insulis Gentilium

ad Christi fidem Conversione, Lovanii, 1570. These letters were written

by Xavier and his companions from the East Indies and Japan, and cover

the years from 1549 to 1564. Though these refer frequently to Xavier,

there is no mention of a miracle wrought by him in any of them written

during his lifetime.

For, shortly after Xavier's heroic and beautiful death in 1552, stories

of miracles wrought by him began to appear. At first they were few and

feeble; and two years later Melchior Nunez, Provincial of the Jesuits

in the Portuguese dominions, with all the means at his command, and a

correspondence extending throughout Eastern Asia, had been able to hear

of but three. These were entirely from hearsay. First, John Deyro said

he knew that Xavier had the gift of prophecy; but, unfortunately,

Xavier himself had reprimanded and cast off Deyro for untruthfulness and

cheatery. Secondly, it was reported vaguely that at Cape Comorin many

persons affirmed that Xavier had raised a man from the dead. Thirdly,

Father Pablo de Santa Fe had heard that in Japan Xavier had restored

sight to a blind man. This seems a feeble beginning, but little by

little the stories grew, and in 1555 De Quadros, Provincial of the

Jesuits in Ethiopia, had heard of nine miracles, and asserted that

Xavier had healed the sick and cast out devils. The next year, being

four years after Xavier's death, King John III of Portugal, a very

devout man, directed his viceroy Barreto to draw up and transmit to him

an authentic account of Xavier's miracles, urging him especially to do

the work "with zeal and speedily." We can well imagine what treasures of

grace an obsequious viceroy, only too anxious to please a devout king,

could bring together by means of the hearsay of ignorant, compliant

natives through all the little towns of Portuguese India.

But the letters of the missionaries who had been co-workers or immediate

successors of Xavier in his Eastern field were still silent as regards

any miracles by him, and they remained silent for nearly ten years. In

the collection of letters published by Emanuel Acosta and others no hint

at any miracles by him is given, until at last, in 1562, fully ten years

after Xavier's death, the first faint beginnings of these legends appear

in them.

At that time the Jesuit Almeida, writing at great length to the

brethren, stated that he had found a pious woman who believed that a

book left behind by Xavier had healed sick folk when it was laid upon

them, and that he had met an old man who preserved a whip left by the

saint which, when properly applied to the sick, had been found good both

for their bodies and their souls. From these and other small beginnings

grew, always luxuriant and sometimes beautiful, the vast mass of legends

which we shall see hereafter.

This growth was affectionately garnered by the more zealous and less

critical brethren in Europe until it had become enormous; but it appears

to have been thought of little value by those best able to judge.

For when, in 1562, Julius Gabriel Eugubinus delivered a solemn oration

on the condition and glory of the Church, before the papal legates and

other fathers assembled at the Council of Trent, while he alluded to

a multitude of things showing the Divine favour, there was not the

remotest allusion to the vast multitude of miracles which, according to

the legends, had been so profusely lavished on the faithful during many

years, and which, if they had actually occurred, formed an argument of

prodigious value in behalf of the special claims of the Church.

The same complete absence of knowledge of any such favours vouchsafed

to the Church, or at least of any belief in them, appears in that great

Council of Trent among the fathers themselves. Certainly there, if

anywhere, one might on the Roman theory expect Divine illumination in a

matter of this kind. The presence of the Holy Spirit in the midst of it

was especially claimed, and yet its members, with all their spiritual

as well as material advantages for knowing what had been going on in the

Church during the previous thirty years, and with Xavier's own friend

and colleague, Laynez, present to inform them, show not the slightest

sign of any suspicion of Xavier's miracles. We have the letters of

Julius Gabriel to the foremost of these fathers assembled at Trent, from

1557 onward for a considerable time, and we have also a multitude of

letters written from the Council by bishops, cardinals, and even by the

Pope himself, discussing all sorts of Church affairs, and in not one

of these is there evidence of the remotest suspicion that any of these

reports, which they must have heard, regarding Xavier's miracles, were

worthy of mention.

Here, too, comes additional supplementary testimony of much

significance. With these orations and letters, Eugubinus gives a Latin

translation of a letter, "on religious affairs in the Indies," written

by a Jesuit father twenty years after Xavier's death. Though the letter

came from a field very distant from that in which Xavier laboured, it

was sure, among the general tokens of Divine favour to the Church and

to the order, on which it dwelt, to have alluded to miracles wrought by

Xavier had there been the slightest ground for believing in them; but no

such allusion appears.(292)

(292) For the work referred to, see Julii Gabrielii Eugubini orationum

et epistolarum, etc., libri duo (et) Epitola de rebus Indicis a quodam

Societatis Jesu presbytero, etc., Venetiis, 1569. The Epistola begins at

fol. 44.

So, too, when in 1588, thirty-six years after Xavier's death, the Jesuit

father Maffei, who had been especially conversant with Xavier's career

in the East, published his History of India, though he gave a biography

of Xavier which shows fervent admiration for his subject, he dwelt very

lightly on the alleged miracles. But the evolution of miraculous legends

still went on. Six years later, in 1594, Father Tursellinus published

his Life of Xavier, and in this appears to have made the first large

use of the information collected by the Portuguese viceroy and the

more zealous brethren. This work shows a vast increase in the number

of miracles over those given by all sources together up to that time.

Xavier is represented as not only curing the sick, but casting out

devils, stilling the tempest, raising the dead, and performing miracles

of every sort.

In 1622 came the canonization proceedings at Rome. Among the speeches

made in the presence of Pope Gregory XV, supporting the claims of Xavier

to saintship, the most important was by Cardinal Monte. In this the

orator selects out ten great miracles from those performed by Xavier

during his lifetime and describes them minutely. He insists that on a

certain occasion Xavier, by the sign of the cross, made sea-water fresh,

so that his fellow-passengers and the crew could drink it; that he

healed the sick and raised the dead in various places; brought back a

lost boat to his ship; was on one occasion lifted from the earth

bodily and transfigured before the bystanders; and that, to punish a

blaspheming town, he caused an earthquake and buried the offenders in

cinders from a volcano: this was afterward still more highly developed,

and the saint was represented in engravings as calling down fire from

heaven and thus destroying the town.

The most curious miracle of all is the eighth on the cardinal's list.

Regarding this he states that, Xavier having during one of his voyages

lost overboard a crucifix, it was restored to him after he had reached

the shore by a crab.

The cardinal also dwelt on miracles performed by Xavier's relics after

his death, the most original being that sundry lamps placed before the

image of the saint and filled with holy water burned as if filled with

oil.

This latter account appears to have deeply impressed the Pope, for in

the Bull of Canonization issued by virtue of his power of teaching

the universal Church infallibly in all matters pertaining to faith and

morals, His Holiness dwells especially upon the miracle of the lamp

filled with holy water and burning before Xavier's image.

Xavier having been made a saint, many other Lives of him appeared, and,

as a rule, each surpassed its predecessor in the multitude of miracles.

In 1622 appeared that compiled and published under the sanction of

Father Vitelleschi, and in it not only are new miracles increased, but

some old ones are greatly improved. One example will suffice to show the

process. In his edition of 1596, Tursellinus had told how, Xavier one

day needing money, and having asked Vellio, one of his friends, to

let him have some, Vellio gave him the key of a safe containing thirty

thousand gold pieces. Xavier took three hundred and returned the key

to Vellio; whereupon Vellio, finding only three hundred pieces gone,

reproached Xavier for not taking more, saying that he had expected to

give him half of all that the strong box contained. Xavier, touched by

this generosity, told Vellio that the time of his death should be made

known to him, that he might have opportunity to repent of his sins and

prepare for eternity. But twenty-six years later the Life of Xavier

published under the sanction of Vitelleschi, giving the story, says that

Vellio on opening the safe found that ALL HIS MONEY remained as he had

left it, and that NONE AT ALL had disappeared; in fact, that there had

been a miraculous restitution. On his blaming Xavier for not taking the

money, Xavier declares to Vellio that not only shall he be apprised of

the moment of his death, but that the box shall always be full of money.

Still later biographers improved the account further, declaring that

Xavier promised Vellio that the strong box should always contain money

sufficient for all his needs. In that warm and uncritical atmosphere

this and other legends grew rapidly, obedient to much the same laws

which govern the evolution of fairy tales.(293)

(293) The writer in the Catholic World, already mentioned, rather

rashly asserts that there is no such Life of Xavier as that I have

above quoted. The reverend Jesuit father has evidently glanced over the

bibliographies of Carayon and De Backer, and, not finding it there

under the name of Vitelleschi, has spared himself further trouble. It

is sufficient to say that the book may be seen by him in the library of

Cornell University. Its full title is as follows: Compendio della Vita

del s. p. Francesco Xaviero dell Campagnia di Giesu, Canonizato con

s. Ignatio Fondatore dell' istessa Religione dalla Santita di N. S.

Gregorio XV. Composto, e dato in luce per ordine del Reverendiss. P

Mutio Vitelleschi Preposito Generale della Comp. di Giesu. In Venetia,

MDCXXII, Appresso Antonio Pinelli. Con Licenza de' Superiori. My critic

hazards a guess that the book may be a later edition of Torsellino

(Tursellinus), but here again he is wrong. It is entirely a different

book, giving in its preface a list of sources comprising eleven

authorities besides Torsellino.

In 1682, one hundred and thirty years after Xavier's death, appeared his

biography by Father Bouhours; and this became a classic. In it the old

miracles of all kinds were enormously multiplied, and many new ones

given. Miracles few and small in Tursellinus became many and great in

Bouhours. In Tursellinus, Xavier during his life saves one person from

drowning, in Bouhours he saves during his life three; in Tursellinus,

Xavier during his life raises four persons from the dead, in Bouhours

fourteen; in Tursellinus there is one miraculous supply of water, in

Bouhours three; in Tursellinus there is no miraculous draught of fishes,

in Bouhours there is one; in Tursellinus, Xavier is transfigured twice,

in Bouhours five times: and so through a long series of miracles which,

in the earlier lives appearing either not at all or in very moderate

form, are greatly increased and enlarged by Tursellinus, and finally

enormously amplified and multiplied by Father Bouhours.

And here it must be borne in mind that Bouhours, writing ninety years

after Tursellinus, could not have had access to any new sources. Xavier

had been dead one hundred and thirty years, and of course all the

natives upon whom he had wrought his miracles, and their children and

grandchildren, were gone. It can not then be claimed that Bouhours had

the advantage of any new witnesses, nor could he have had anything

new in the way of contemporary writings; for, as we have seen, the

missionaries of Xavier's time wrote nothing regarding his miracles, and

certainly the ignorant natives of India and Japan did not commit any

account of his miracles to writing. Nevertheless, the miracles of

healing given in Bouhours were more numerous and brilliant than ever.

But there was far more than this. Although during the lifetime of Xavier

there is neither in his own writings nor in any contemporary account any

assertion of a resurrection from the dead wrought by him, we find that

shortly after his death stories of such resurrections began to appear.

A simple statement of the growth of these may throw some light on the

evolution of miraculous accounts generally. At first it was affirmed

that some people at Cape Comorin said that he had raised one person;

then it was said that there were two persons; then in various

authors--Emanuel Acosta, in his commentaries written as an afterthought

nearly twenty years after Xavier's death, De Quadros, and others--the

story wavers between one and two cases; finally, in the time of

Tursellinus, four cases had been developed. In 1622, at the canonization

proceedings, three were mentioned; but by the time of Father Bouhours

there were fourteen--all raised from the dead by Xavier himself during

his lifetime--and the name, place, and circumstances are given with much

detail in each case.(294)

(294) The writer in the Catholic World, already referred to, has based

an attack here upon a misconception--I will not call it a deliberate

misrepresentation--of his own by stating that these resurrections

occurred after Xavier's death, and were due to his intercession or the

use of his relics. The statement of the Jesuit father is utterly without

foundation, as a simple reference to Bouhours will show. I take the

liberty of commending to his attention The Life of St. Francis Xavier,

by Father Dominic Bouhours, translated by James Dryden, Dublin, 1838.

For examples of raising the dead by the saint DURING HIS LIFETIME, see

pp. 69, 82, 93, 111, 218, 307, 316, 321--fourteen cases in all.

It seems to have been felt as somewhat strange at first that Xavier

had never alluded to any of these wonderful miracles; but ere long a

subsidiary legend was developed, to the effect that one of the brethren

asked him one day if he had raised the dead, whereat he blushed deeply

and cried out against the idea, saying: "And so I am said to have raised

the dead! What a misleading man I am! Some men brought a youth to me

just as if he were dead, who, when I commanded him to arise in the name

of Christ, straightway arose."

Noteworthy is the evolution of other miracles. Tursellinus, writing in

1594, tells us that on the voyage from Goa to Malacca, Xavier having

left the ship and gone upon an island, was afterward found by the

persons sent in search of him so deeply absorbed in prayer as to be

unmindful of all things about him. But in the next century Father

Bouhours develops the story as follows: "The servants found the man of

God raised from the ground into the air, his eyes fixed upon heaven, and

rays of light about his countenance."

Instructive, also, is a comparison between the successive accounts of

his noted miracle among the Badages at Travancore, in 1544 Xavier in

his letters makes no reference to anything extraordinary; and Emanuel

Acosta, in 1571, declares simply that "Xavier threw himself into the

midst of the Christians, that reverencing him they might spare the

rest." The inevitable evolution of the miraculous goes on; and twenty

years later Tursellinus tells us that, at the onslaught of the Badages,

"they could not endure the majesty of his countenance and the splendour

and rays which issued from his eyes, and out of reverence for him they

spared the others." The process of incubation still goes on during

ninety years more, and then comes Father Bouhours's account. Having

given Xavier's prayer on the battlefield, Bouhours goes on to say that

the saint, crucifix in hand, rushed at the head of the people toward the

plain where the enemy was marching, and "said to them in a threatening

voice, 'I forbid you in the name of the living God to advance farther,

and on His part command you to return in the way you came.' These few

words cast a terror into the minds of those soldiers who were at the

head of the army; they remained confounded and without motion. They who

marched afterward, seeing that the foremost did not advance, asked the

reason of it. The answer was returned from the front ranks that they had

before their eyes an unknown person habited in black, of more than human

stature, of terrible aspect, and darting fire from his eyes.... They were

seized with amazement at the sight, and all of them fled in precipitate

confusion."

Curious, too, is the after-growth of the miracle of the crab restoring

the crucifix. In its first form Xavier lost the crucifix in the sea,

and the earlier biographers dwell on the sorrow which he showed in

consequence; but the later historians declare that the saint threw the

crucifix into the sea in order to still a tempest, and that, after his

safe getting to land, a crab brought it to him on the shore. In this

form we find it among illustrations of books of devotion in the next

century.

But perhaps the best illustration of this evolution of Xavier's miracles

is to be found in the growth of another legend; and it is especially

instructive because it grew luxuriantly despite the fact that it was

utterly contradicted in all parts of Xavier's writings as well as in the

letters of his associates and in the work of the Jesuit father, Joseph

Acosta.

Throughout his letters, from first to last, Xavier constantly dwells

upon his difficulties with the various languages of the different tribes

among whom he went. He tells us how he surmounted these difficulties:

sometimes by learning just enough of a language to translate into it

some of the main Church formulas; sometimes by getting the help of

others to patch together some pious teachings to be learned by rote;

sometimes by employing interpreters; and sometimes by a mixture of

various dialects, and even by signs. On one occasion he tells us that a

very serious difficulty arose, and that his voyage to China was delayed

because, among other things, the interpreter he had engaged had failed

to meet him.

In various Lives which appeared between the time of his death and

his canonization this difficulty is much dwelt upon; but during the

canonization proceedings at Rome, in the speeches then made, and finally

in the papal bull, great stress was laid upon the fact that Xavier

possessed THE GIFT OF TONGUES. It was declared that he spoke to the

various tribes with ease in their own languages. This legend of Xavier's

miraculous gift of tongues was especially mentioned in the papal bull,

and was solemnly given forth by the pontiff as an infallible statement

to be believed by the universal Church. Gregory XV having been prevented

by death from issuing the Bull of Canonization, it was finally issued by

Urban VIII; and there is much food for reflection in the fact that the

same Pope who punished Galileo, and was determined that the Inquisition

should not allow the world to believe that the earth revolves about

the sun, thus solemnly ordered the world, under pain of damnation, to

believe in Xavier's miracles, including his "gift of tongues," and the

return of the crucifix by the pious crab. But the legend was developed

still further: Father Bouhours tells us, "The holy man spoke very well

the language of those barbarians without having learned it, and had no

need of an interpreter when he instructed." And, finally, in our

own time, the Rev. Father Coleridge, speaking of the saint among the

natives, says, "He could speak the language excellently, though he had

never learned it."

In the early biography, Tursellinus writes. "Nothing was a greater

impediment to him than his ignorance of the Japanese tongues; for, ever

and anon, when some uncouth expression offended their fastidious and

delicate ears, the awkward speech of Francis was a cause of laughter."

But Father Bouhours, a century later, writing of Xavier at the same

period, says, "He preached in the afternoon to the Japanese in their

language, but so naturally and with so much ease that he could not be

taken for a foreigner."

And finally, in 1872, Father Coleridge, of the Society of Jesus,

speaking of Xavier at this time, says, "He spoke freely, flowingly,

elegantly, as if he had lived in Japan all his life."

Nor was even this sufficient: to make the legend complete, it was

finally declared that, when Xavier addressed the natives of various

tribes, each heard the sermon in his own language in which he was born.

All this, as we have seen, directly contradicts not only the plain

statements of Xavier himself, and various incidental testimonies in the

letters of his associates, but the explicit declaration of Father Joseph

Acosta. The latter historian dwells especially on the labour which

Xavier was obliged to bestow on the study of the Japanese and other

languages, and says, "Even if he had been endowed with the apostolic

gift of tongues, he could not have spread more widely the glory of

Christ."(295)

(295) For the evolution of the miracles of Xavier, see his Letters, with

Life, published by Leon Pages, Paris, 1855; also Maffei, Historiarum

Indicarum libri xvi, Venice, 1589; also the lives by Tursellinus,

various editions, beginning with that of 1594; Vitelleschi, 1622;

Bouhours, 1683; Massei, second edition, 1682 (Rome), and others;

Bartoli, Baltimore, 1868; Coleridge, 1872. In addition to these, I have

compared, for a more extended discussion of this subject hereafter,

a very great number of editions of these and other biographies of

the saint, with speeches at the canonization, the bull of Gregory XV,

various books of devotion, and a multitude of special writings, some

of them in manuscript, upon the glories of the saint, including a large

mass of material at the Royal Library in Munich and in the British

Museum. I have relied entirely upon Catholic authors, and have

not thought it worth while to consult any Protestant author. The

illustration of the miracle of the crucifix and the crab in its final

form is given in La Devotion de Dix Vendredis a l'Honneur de St.

Francois Xavier, Bruxelles, 1699, Fig. 24: the pious crab is represented

as presenting the crucifix by which a journey of forty leagues he has

brought from the depths of the ocean to Xavier, who walks upon the

shore. The book is in the Cornell University Library. For the letter

of King John to Barreto, see Leon Pages's Lettres de Francois Xavier,

Paris, 1855, vol. ii, p. 465. For the miracle among the Badages, compare

Tursellinus, lib. ii, c. x, p. 16, with Bouhours, Dryden's translation,

pp. 146, 147. For the miracle of the gift of tongues, in its higher

development, see Bouhours, p. 235, and Coleridge, vo. i, pp. 151, 154,

and vol. ii, p. 551

It is hardly necessary to attribute to the orators and biographers

generally a conscious attempt to deceive. The simple fact is, that as

a rule they thought, spoke, and wrote in obedience to the natural

laws which govern the luxuriant growth of myth and legend in the warm

atmosphere of love and devotion which constantly arises about great

religious leaders in times when men have little or no knowledge of

natural law, when there is little care for scientific evidence, and when

he who believes most is thought most meritorious.(296)

(296) Instances can be given of the same evolution of miraculous legend

in our own time. To say nothing of the sacred fountain at La Salette,

which preserves its healing powers in spite of the fact that the miracle

that gave rise to them has twice been pronounced fraudulent by the

French courts, and to pass without notice a multitude of others, not

only in Catholic but in Protestant countries, the present writer may

allude to one which in the year 1893 came under his own observation.

On arriving in St. Petersburg to begin an official residence there,

his attention was arrested by various portraits of a priest of the

Russo-Greek Church; they were displayed in shop windows and held an

honoured place in many private dwellings. These portraits ranged from

lifelike photographs, which showed a plain, shrewd, kindly face, to

those which were idealized until they bore a strong resemblance to the

conventional representations of Jesus of Nazareth. On making inquiries,

the writer found that these portraits represented Father Ivan, of

Cronstadt, a priest noted for his good works, and very widely believed

to be endowed with the power of working miracles.

One day, in one of the most brilliant reception rooms of the northern

capital, the subject of Father Ivan's miracles having been introduced, a

gentleman in very high social position and entirely trustworthy spoke as

follows: "There is something very surprising about these miracles. I am

slow to believe in them, but I know the following to be a fact: The

late Metropolitan Archbishop of St. Petersburg loved quiet, and was

very adverse to anything which could possibly cause scandal. Hearing

of Father Ivan's miracles, he summoned him to his presence and solemnly

commanded him to abstain from all of the things which had given rise to

his reported miracles, and with this injunction, dismissed him. Hardly

had the priest left the room when the archbishop was struck with

blindness and remained in this condition until the priest returned and

removed his blindness by intercessory prayers." When the present writer

asked the person giving this account if he directly knew these facts,

he replied that he was, of course, not present when the miracle was

wrought, but that he had the facts immediately from persons who knew all

the parties concerned and were cognizant directly of the circumstances

of the case.

Some time afterward, the present writer being at an afternoon reception

at one of the greater embassies, the same subject was touched upon, when

an eminent general spoke as follows: "I am not inclined to believe in

miracles, in fact am rather sceptical, but the proofs of those wrought

by Father Ivan are overwhelming." He then went on to say that the late

Metropolitan Archbishop was a man who loved quiet and disliked scandal;

and that on this account he had summoned Father Ivan to his palace and

ordered him to put an end to the conduct which had caused the reports

concerning his miraculous powers, and then, with a wave of the arm,

had dismissed him. The priest left the room, and from that moment the

archbishop's arm was paralyzed, and it remained so until the penitent

prelate summoned the priest again, by whose prayers the arm was restored

to its former usefulness. There was present at the time another person

besides the writer who had heard the previous statement as to the

blindness of the archbishop, and on their both questioning the general

if he were sure that the archbishop's arm was paralyzed, as stated, he

declared that he could not doubt it, as he had it directly from persons

entirely trustworthy, who were cognizant of all the facts.

Some time later, the present writer, having an interview with the most

eminent lay authority in the Greek Church, a functionary whose duties

had brought him into almost daily contact with the late archbishop,

asked him which of these stories was correct. This gentleman answered

immediately: "Neither; I saw the archbishop constantly, and no such

event occurred; he was never paralyzed and never blind."

The same gentleman went on to say that, in his belief, Father Ivan had

shown remarkable powers in healing the sick, and the greatest charity in

relieving the distressed. It was made clearly evident that Father Ivan

is a saintlike man, devoted to the needy and distressed and exercising

an enormous influence over them--an influence so great that crowds

await him whenever he visits the capital. In the atmosphere of Russian

devotion myths and legends grow luxuriantly about him, nor is belief in

him confined to the peasant class. In the autumn of 1894 he was summoned

to the bedside of the Emperor Alexander III. Unfortunately for the peace

of Europe, his intercession at that time proved unavailing.

These examples will serve to illustrate the process which in thousands

of cases has gone on from the earliest days of the Church until a very

recent period. Everywhere miraculous cures became the rule rather than

the exception throughout Christendom.

III. THE MEDIAEVAL MIRACLES OF HEALING CHECK MEDICAL SCIENCE.

So it was that, throughout antiquity, during the early history of the

Church, throughout the Middle Ages, and indeed down to a comparatively

recent period, testimony to miraculous interpositions which would now

be laughed at by a schoolboy was accepted by the leaders of thought. St.

Augustine was certainly one of the strongest minds in the early Church,

and yet we find him mentioning, with much seriousness, a story that

sundry innkeepers of his time put a drug into cheese which metamorphosed

travellers into domestic animals, and asserting that the peacock is so

favoured by the Almighty that its flesh will not decay, and that he has

tested it and knows this to be a fact. With such a disposition regarding

the wildest stories, it is not surprising that the assertion of St.

Gregory of Nazianzen, during the second century, as to the cures wrought

by the martyrs Cosmo and Damian, was echoed from all parts of Europe

until every hamlet had its miracle-working saint or relic.

The literature of these miracles is simply endless. To take our own

ancestors alone, no one can read the Ecclesiastical History of Bede, or

Abbot Samson's Miracles of St. Edmund, or the accounts given by Eadmer

and Osbern of the miracles of St. Dunstan, or the long lists of those

wrought by Thomas a Becket, or by any other in the army of English

saints, without seeing the perfect naturalness of this growth. This

evolution of miracle in all parts of Europe came out of a vast preceding

series of beliefs, extending not merely through the early Church but far

back into paganism. Just as formerly patients were cured in the temples

of Aesculapius, so they were cured in the Middle Ages, and so they are

cured now at the shrines of saints. Just as the ancient miracles were

solemnly attested by votive tablets, giving names, dates, and details,

and these tablets hung before the images of the gods, so the medieval

miracles were attested by similar tablets hung before the images of the

saints; and so they are attested to-day by similar tablets hung before

the images of Our Lady of La Salette or of Lourdes. Just as faith in

such miracles persisted, in spite of the small percentage of cures at

those ancient places of healing, so faith persists to-day, despite the

fact that in at least ninety per cent of the cases at Lourdes prayers

prove unavailing. As a rule, the miracles of the sacred books were

taken as models, and each of those given by the sacred chroniclers was

repeated during the early ages of the Church and through the medieval

period with endless variations of circumstance, but still with curious

fidelity to the original type.

It should be especially kept in mind that, while the vast majority

of these were doubtless due to the myth-making faculty and to that

development of legends which always goes on in ages ignorant of the

relation between physical causes and effects, some of the miracles of

healing had undoubtedly some basis in fact. We in modern times have

seen too many cures performed through influences exercised upon the

imagination, such as those of the Jansenists at the Cemetery of St.

Medard, of the Ultramontanes at La Salette and Lourdes, of the Russian

Father Ivan at St. Petersburg, and of various Protestant sects at Old

Orchard and elsewhere, as well as at sundry camp meetings, to doubt that

some cures, more or less permanent, were wrought by sainted personages

in the early Church and throughout the Middle Ages.(297)

(297) For the story of travellers converted into domestic animals, see

St. Augustine, De Civ. Dei, liber xviii, chaps. xvii, xviii, in Migne,

tom. xli, p.574. For Gregory of Nazianen and the similarity of these

Christian cures in general character to those wrought in the temples

of Aesculapius, see Sprengel, vol. ii, pp. 145, 146. For the miracles

wrought at the shrine of St. Edmund, see Samsonis Abbatis Opus de

Miraculis Sancti Aedmundi, in the Master of the Rolls' series, passim,

but especially chaps. xiv and xix for miracles of healing wrought on

those who drank out of the saint's cup. For the mighty works of St.

Dunstan, see the Mirac. Sancti Dunstani, auctore Eadmero and auctore

Osberno, in the Master of the Rolls' series. As to Becket, see the

Materials for the History of Thomas Becket, in the same series, and

especially the lists of miracles--the mere index of them in the first

volume requires thirteen octavo pages. For St. Martin of Tours, see the

Guizot collection of French Chronicles. For miracle and shrine cures

chronicled by Bede, see his Ecclesiastical History, passim, but

especially from page 110 to page 267. For similarity between the ancient

custom of allowing invalids to sleep in the temples of Serapis and the

mediaeval custom of having them sleep in the church of St. Anthony of

Padua and other churches, see Meyer, Aberglaube des Mittelalters, Basel,

1884, chap. iv. For the effect of "the vivid belief in supernatural

action which attaches itself to the tombs of the saints," etc., as "a

psychic agent of great value," see Littre, Medecine et Medecins, p. 131.

For the Jansenist miracles at Paris, see La Verite des Miracles operes

par l'Intercession de M. de Paris, par Montgeron, Utrecht, 1737, and

especially the cases of Mary Anne Couronneau, Philippe Sargent,

and Gautier de Pezenas. For some very thoughtful remarks as to the

worthlessness of the testimony to miracles presented during the

canonization proceedings at Rome, see Maury, Legendes Pieuses, pp. 4-7.

There are undoubtedly serious lesions which yield to profound emotion

and vigorous exertion born of persuasion, confidence, or excitement. The

wonderful power of the mind over the body is known to every observant

student. Mr. Herbert Spencer dwells upon the fact that intense feeling

or passion may bring out great muscular force. Dr. Berdoe reminds us

that "a gouty man who has long hobbled about on his crutch, finds his

legs and power to run with them if pursued by a wild bull"; and that

"the feeblest invalid, under the influence of delirium or other

strong excitement, will astonish her nurse by the sudden accession of

strength."(298)

(298) For the citation in the text, as well as for a brief but

remarkably valuable discussion of the power of the mind over the body

in disease, see Dr. Berdoe's Medical View of the Miracles at Lourdes, in

The Nineteenth Century for October, 1895.

But miraculous cures were not ascribed to persons merely. Another

growth, developed by the early Church mainly from germs in our sacred

books, took shape in miracles wrought by streams, by pools of water, and

especially by relics. Here, too, the old types persisted, and just as

we find holy and healing wells, pools, and streams in all other ancient

religions, so we find in the evolution of our own such examples as

Naaman the Syrian cured of leprosy by bathing in the river Jordan, the

blind man restored to sight by washing in the pool of Siloam, and the

healing of those who touched the bones of Elisha, the shadow of St.

Peter, or the handkerchief of St. Paul.

St. Cyril, St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, and other great fathers of the

early Church, sanctioned the belief that similar efficacy was to be

found in the relics of the saints of their time; hence, St. Ambrose

declared that "the precepts of medicine are contrary to celestial

science, watching, and prayer," and we find this statement reiterated

from time to time throughout the Middle Ages. From this idea was evolved

that fetichism which we shall see for ages standing in the way of

medical science.

Theology, developed in accordance with this idea, threw about all cures,

even those which resulted from scientific effort, an atmosphere of

supernaturalism. The vividness with which the accounts of miracles in

the sacred books were realized in the early Church continued the idea of

miraculous intervention throughout the Middle Ages. The testimony of

the great fathers of the Church to the continuance of miracles is

overwhelming; but everything shows that they so fully expected miracles

on the slightest occasion as to require nothing which in these days

would be regarded as adequate evidence.

In this atmosphere of theologic thought medical science was at once

checked. The School of Alexandria, under the influence first of Jews and

later of Christians, both permeated with Oriental ideas, and taking into

their theory of medicine demons and miracles, soon enveloped everything

in mysticism. In the Byzantine Empire of the East the same cause

produced the same effect; the evolution of ascertained truth in

medicine, begun by Hippocrates and continued by Herophilus, seemed lost

forever. Medical science, trying to advance, was like a ship becalmed

in the Sargasso Sea: both the atmosphere about it and the medium through

which it must move resisted all progress. Instead of reliance upon

observation, experience, experiment, and thought, attention was turned

toward supernatural agencies.(299)

(299) For the mysticism which gradually enveloped the School of

Alexandria, see Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire, De l'Ecole d'Alexandrie,

Paris, 1845, vol. vi, p. 161. For the effect of the new doctrines on the

Empire of the East, see Sprengel, vol. ii, p. 240. As to the more common

miracles of healing and the acknowledgment of non-Christian miracles of

healing by Christian fathers, see Fort, p. 84.

IV. THE ATTRIBUTION OF DISEASE TO SATANIC INFLUENCE.

--"PASTORAL MEDICINE" CHECKS SCIENTIFIC EFFORT.

Especially prejudicial to a true development of medical science among

the first Christians was their attribution of disease to diabolic

influence. As we have seen, this idea had come from far, and, having

prevailed in Chaldea, Egypt, and Persia, had naturally entered into the

sacred books of the Hebrews. Moreover, St. Paul had distinctly declared

that the gods of the heathen were devils; and everywhere the early

Christians saw in disease the malignant work of these dethroned powers

of evil. The Gnostic and Manichaean struggles had ripened the theologic

idea that, although at times diseases are punishments by the Almighty,

the main agency in them is Satanic. The great fathers and renowned

leaders of the early Church accepted and strengthened this idea. Origen

said: "It is demons which produce famine, unfruitfulness, corruptions

of the air, pestilences; they hover concealed in clouds in the lower

atmosphere, and are attracted by the blood and incense which the heathen

offer to them as gods." St. Augustine said: "All diseases of

Christians are to be ascribed to these demons; chiefly do they torment

fresh-baptized Christians, yea, even the guiltless, newborn infants."

Tertullian insisted that a malevolent angel is in constant attendance

upon every person. Gregory of Nazianzus declared that bodily pains are

provoked by demons, and that medicines are useless, but that they are

often cured by the laying on of consecrated hands. St. Nilus and

St. Gregory of Tours, echoing St. Ambrose, gave examples to show

the sinfulness of resorting to medicine instead of trusting to the

intercession of saints. St. Bernard, in a letter to certain monks,

warned them that to seek relief from disease in medicine was in harmony

neither with their religion nor with the honour and purity of their

order. This view even found its way into the canon law, which declared

the precepts of medicine contrary to Divine knowledge. As a rule, the

leaders of the Church discouraged the theory that diseases are due to

natural causes, and most of them deprecated a resort to surgeons and

physicians rather than to supernatural means.(300)

(300) For Chaldean, Egyptian, and Persian ideas as to the diabolic

origin of disease, see authorities already cited, especially Maspero

and Sayce. For Origen, see the Contra Celsum, lib. viii, chap. xxxi. For

Augustine, see De Divinatione Daemonum, chap. iii (p.585 of Migne, vol.

xl). For Turtullian and Gregory of Nazianzus, see citations in Sprengel

and in Fort, p. 6. For St. Nilus, see his life, in the Bollandise Acta

Sanctorum. For Gregory of Tours, see his Historia Francorum, lib. v,

cap. 6, and his De Mirac. S. Martini, lib. ii, cap. 60. I owe these

citations to Mr. Lea (History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages,

vol. iii, p. 410, note). For the letter of St. Bernard to the monks of

St. Anastasius, see his Epistola in Migne, tom. 182, pp. 550, 551. For

the canon law, see under De Consecratione, dist. v, c. xxi, "Contraria

sunt divinae cognitioni praecepta medicinae: a jejunio revocant,

lucubrare non sinunt, ab omni intentione meditiationis abducunt." For

the turning of the Greek mythology into a demonology as largely due

to St. Paul, see I Corinthians x, 20: "The things which the Gentiles

sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God."

Out of these and similar considerations was developed the vast system of

"pastoral medicine," so powerful not only through the Middle Ages, but

even in modern times, both among Catholics and Protestants. As to its

results, we must bear in mind that, while there is no need to attribute

the mass of stories regarding miraculous cures to conscious fraud,

there was without doubt, at a later period, no small admixture of belief

biased by self-interest, with much pious invention and suppression of

facts. Enormous revenues flowed into various monasteries and churches

in all parts of Europe from relics noted for their healing powers. Every

cathedral, every great abbey, and nearly every parish church claimed

possession of healing relics. While, undoubtedly, a childlike faith

was at the bottom of this belief, there came out of it unquestionably

a great development of the mercantile spirit. The commercial value

of sundry relics was often very high. In the year 1056 a French

ruler pledged securities to the amount of ten thousand solidi for the

production of the relics of St. Just and St. Pastor, pending a legal

decision regarding the ownership between him and the Archbishop

of Narbonne. The Emperor of Germany on one occasion demanded, as a

sufficient pledge for the establishment of a city market, the arm of St.

George. The body of St. Sebastian brought enormous wealth to the Abbey

of Soissons; Rome, Canterbury, Treves, Marburg, every great city, drew

large revenues from similar sources, and the Venetian Republic ventured

very considerable sums in the purchase of relics.

Naturally, then, corporations, whether lay or ecclesiastical, which drew

large revenue from relics looked with little favour on a science which

tended to discredit their investments.

Nowhere, perhaps, in Europe can the philosophy of this development of

fetichism be better studied to-day than at Cologne. At the cathedral,

preserved in a magnificent shrine since about the twelfth century, are

the skulls of the Three Kings, or Wise Men of the East, who, guided by

the star of Bethlehem, brought gifts to the Saviour. These relics

were an enormous source of wealth to the cathedral chapter during many

centuries. But other ecclesiastical bodies in that city were both

pious and shrewd, and so we find that not far off, at the church of St.

Gereon, a cemetery has been dug up, and the bones distributed over the

walls as the relics of St. Gereon and his Theban band of martyrs! Again,

at the neighbouring church of St. Ursula, we have the later spoils of

another cemetery, covering the interior walls of the church as the bones

of St. Ursula and her eleven thousand virgin martyrs: the fact that many

of them, as anatomists now declare, are the bones of MEN does not appear

in the Middle Ages to have diminished their power of competing with the

relics at the other shrines in healing efficiency.

No error in the choice of these healing means seems to have diminished

their efficacy. When Prof. Buckland, the eminent osteologist and

geologist, discovered that the relics of St. Rosalia at Palermo, which

had for ages cured diseases and warded off epidemics, were the bones

of a goat, this fact caused not the slightest diminution in their

miraculous power.

Other developments of fetich cure were no less discouraging to the

evolution of medical science. Very important among these was the Agnus

Dei, or piece of wax from the Paschal candles, stamped with the figure

of a lamb and consecrated by the Pope. In 1471 Pope Paul II expatiated

to the Church on the efficacy of this fetich in preserving men from

fire, shipwreck, tempest, lightning, and hail, as well as in assisting

women in childbirth; and he reserved to himself and his successors

the manufacture of it. Even as late as 1517 Pope Leo X issued, for a

consideration, tickets bearing a cross and the following inscription:

"This cross measured forty times makes the height of Christ in

his humanity. He who kisses it is preserved for seven days from

falling-sickness, apoplexy, and sudden death."

Naturally, the belief thus sanctioned by successive heads of the Church,

infallible in all teaching regarding faith and morals, created a demand

for amulets and charms of all kinds; and under this influence we find

a reversion to old pagan fetiches. Nothing, on the whole, stood more

constantly in the way of any proper development of medical science than

these fetich cures, whose efficacy was based on theological reasoning

and sanctioned by ecclesiastical policy. It would be expecting too much

from human nature to imagine that pontiffs who derived large revenues

from the sale of the Agnus Dei, or priests who derived both wealth

and honours from cures wrought at shrines under their care, or lay

dignitaries who had invested heavily in relics, should favour the

development of any science which undermined their interests.(301)

(301) See Fort's Medical Economy during the Middle Ages, pp. 211-213;

also the Handbooks of Murray and Baedeker for North Germany, and various

histories of medicine passim; also Collin de Plancy and scores of

others. For the discovery that the relics of St. Rosaria at Palermo are

simply the bones of a goat, see Gordon, Life of Buckland, pp. 94-96.

For an account of the Agnes Dei, see Rydberg, pp. 62, 63; and for

"Conception Billets," pp. 64 and 65. For Leo X's tickets, see Hausser

(professor at Heidelberg), Period of Reformation, English translation,

p. 17.

V. THEOLOGICAL OPPOSITION TO ANATOMICAL STUDIES.

Yet a more serious stumbling-block, hindering the beginnings of modern

medicine and surgery, was a theory regarding the unlawfulness of

meddling with the bodies of the dead. This theory, like so many others

which the Church cherished as peculiarly its own, had really been

inherited from the old pagan civilizations. So strong was it in Egypt

that the embalmer was regarded as accursed; traces of it appear in

Greco-Roman life, and hence it came into the early Church, where it was

greatly strengthened by the addition of perhaps the most noble of mystic

ideas--the recognition of the human body as the temple of the Holy

Spirit. Hence Tertullian denounced the anatomist Herophilus as a

butcher, and St. Augustine spoke of anatomists generally in similar

terms.

But this nobler conception was alloyed with a medieval superstition even

more effective, when the formula known as the Apostles' Creed had, in

its teachings regarding the resurrection of the body, supplanted the

doctrine laid down by St. Paul. Thence came a dread of mutilating

the body in such a way that some injury might result to its final

resurrection at the Last Day, and additional reasons for hindering

dissections in the study of anatomy.

To these arguments against dissection was now added another--one which

may well fill us with amazement. It is the remark of the foremost of

recent English philosophical historians, that of all organizations in

human history the Church of Rome has caused the greatest spilling of

innocent blood. No one conversant with history, even though he admit all

possible extenuating circumstances, and honour the older Church for the

great services which can undoubtedly be claimed for her, can deny this

statement. Strange is it, then, to note that one of the main objections

developed in the Middle Ages against anatomical studies was the maxim

that "the Church abhors the shedding of blood."

On this ground, in 1248, the Council of Le Mans forbade surgery

to monks. Many other councils did the same, and at the end of the

thirteenth century came the most serious blow of all; for then it was

that Pope Boniface VIII, without any of that foresight of consequences

which might well have been expected in an infallible teacher, issued

a decretal forbidding a practice which had come into use during the

Crusades, namely, the separation of the flesh from the bones of the dead

whose remains it was desired to carry back to their own country.

The idea lying at the bottom of this interdiction was in all probability

that which had inspired Tertullian to make his bitter utterance against

Herophilus; but, be that as it may, it soon came to be considered as

extending to all dissection, and thereby surgery and medicine were

crippled for more than two centuries; it was the worst blow they ever

received, for it impressed upon the mind of the Church the belief

that all dissection is sacrilege, and led to ecclesiastical mandates

withdrawing from the healing art the most thoughtful and cultivated men

of the Middle Ages and giving up surgery to the lowest class of nomadic

charlatans.

So deeply was this idea rooted in the mind of the universal Church that

for over a thousand years surgery was considered dishonourable: the

greatest monarchs were often unable to secure an ordinary surgical

operation; and it was only in 1406 that a better beginning was made,

when the Emperor Wenzel of Germany ordered that dishonour should no

longer attach to the surgical profession.(302)

(302) As to religious scruples against dissection, and abhorrence of

the Paraschites, or embalmer, see Maspero and Sayce, The Dawn of

Civilization, p. 216. For denunciation of surgery by the Church

authorities, see Sprengel, vol. ii, pp. 432-435; also Fort, pp. 452 et

seq.; and for the reasoning which led the Church to forbid surgery to

priests, see especially Fredault, Histoire de la Medecine, p. 200. As

to the decretal of Boniface VIII, the usual statement is that he forbade

all dissections. While it was undoubtedly construed universally to

prohibit dissections for anatomical purposes, its declared intent was as

stated in the text; that it was constantly construed against anatomical

investigations can not for a moment be denied. This construction is

taken for granted in the great Histoire Litteraire de la France, founded

by the Benedictines, certainly a very high authority as to the main

current of opinion in the Church. For the decretal of Boniface VIII, see

the Corpus Juris Canonici. I have also used the edition of Paris, 1618,

where it may be found on pp. 866, 867. See also, in spite of the special

pleading of Giraldi, the Benedictine Hist. Lit. de la France, tome xvi,

p. 98.

VI. NEW BEGINNINGS OF MEDICAL SCIENCE.

In spite of all these opposing forces, the evolution of medical science

continued, though but slowly. In the second century of the Christian

era Galen had made himself a great authority at Rome, and from Rome had

swayed the medical science of the world: his genius triumphed over

the defects of his method; but, though he gave a powerful impulse to

medicine, his dogmatism stood in its way long afterward.

The places where medicine, such as it thus became, could be applied,

were at first mainly the infirmaries of various monasteries, especially

the larger ones of the Benedictine order: these were frequently

developed into hospitals. Many monks devoted themselves to such medical

studies as were permitted, and sundry churchmen and laymen did much to

secure and preserve copies of ancient medical treatises. So, too, in the

cathedral schools established by Charlemagne and others, provision was

generally made for medical teaching; but all this instruction, whether

in convents or schools, was wretchedly poor. It consisted not

in developing by individual thought and experiment the gifts of

Hippocrates, Aristotle, and Galen, but almost entirely in the

parrot-like repetition of their writings.

But, while the inherited ideas of Church leaders were thus unfavourable

to any proper development of medical science, there were two bodies of

men outside the Church who, though largely fettered by superstition,

were far less so than the monks and students of ecclesiastical schools:

these were the Jews and Mohammedans. The first of these especially had

inherited many useful sanitary and hygienic ideas, which had probably

been first evolved by the Egyptians, and from them transmitted to the

modern world mainly through the sacred books attributed to Moses.

The Jewish scholars became especially devoted to medical science. To

them is largely due the building up of the School of Salerno, which we

find flourishing in the tenth century. Judged by our present standards

its work was poor indeed, but compared with other medical instruction

of the time it was vastly superior: it developed hygienic principles

especially, and brought medicine upon a higher plane.

Still more important is the rise of the School of Montpellier; this

was due almost entirely to Jewish physicians, and it developed medical

studies to a yet higher point, doing much to create a medical profession

worthy of the name throughout southern Europe.

As to the Arabians, we find them from the tenth to the fourteenth

century, especially in Spain, giving much thought to medicine, and to

chemistry as subsidiary to it. About the beginning of the ninth century,

when the greater Christian writers were supporting fetich by theology,

Almamon, the Moslem, declared, "They are the elect of God, his best

and most useful servants, whose lives are devoted to the improvement of

their rational faculties." The influence of Avicenna, the translator

of the works of Aristotle, extended throughout all Europe during the

eleventh century. The Arabians were indeed much fettered by tradition

in medical science, but their translations of Hippocrates and Galen

preserved to the world the best thus far developed in medicine, and

still better were their contributions to pharmacy: these remain of value

to the present hour.(303)

(303) For the great services rendered to the development of medicine by

the Jews, see Monteil, Medecine en France, p. 58; also the historians of

medicine generally. For the quotation from Almamon, see Gibbon, vol.

x, p. 42. For the services of both Jews and Arabians, see Bedarride,

Histoire des Juifs, p. 115; also Sismondi, Histoire des Francais, tome

i, p. 191. For the Arabians, especially, see Rosseeuw Saint-Hilaire,

Histoire d'Espagne, Paris, 1844, vol. iii, pp. 191 et seq. For

the tendency of the Mosaic books to insist on hygienic rather than

therapeutical treatment, and its consequences among Jewish physicians,

see Sprengel, but especially Fredault, p.14.

Various Christian laymen also rose above the prevailing theologic

atmosphere far enough to see the importance of promoting scientific

development. First among these we may name the Emperor Charlemagne; he

and his great minister, Alcuin, not only promoted medical studies in the

schools they founded, but also made provision for the establishment of

botanic gardens in which those herbs were especially cultivated which

were supposed to have healing virtues. So, too, in the thirteenth

century, the Emperor Frederick II, though under the ban of the Pope,

brought together in his various journeys, and especially in his

crusading expeditions, many Greek and Arabic manuscripts, and took

special pains to have those which concerned medicine preserved and

studied; he also promoted better ideas of medicine and embodied them in

laws.

Men of science also rose, in the stricter sense of the word, even in

the centuries under the most complete sway of theological thought and

ecclesiastical power; a science, indeed, alloyed with theology, but

still infolding precious germs. Of these were men like Arnold of

Villanova, Bertrand de Gordon, Albert of Bollstadt, Basil Valentine,

Raymond Lully, and, above all, Roger Bacon; all of whom cultivated

sciences subsidiary to medicine, and in spite of charges of sorcery,

with possibilities of imprisonment and death, kept the torch of

knowledge burning, and passed it on to future generations.(304)

(304) For the progress of sciences subsidiary to medicine even in the

darkest ages, see Fort, pp. 374, 375; also Isensee, Geschichte der

Medicin, pp. 225 et seq.; also Monteil, p. 89; Heller, Geschichte der

Physik, vol. i, bk. 3; also Kopp, Geschichte der Chemie. For Frederick

II and his Medicinal-Gesetz, see Baas, p. 221, but especially Von

Raumer, Geschichte der Hohenstaufen, Leipsic, 1872, vol. iii, p. 259.

From the Church itself, even when the theological atmosphere was

most dense, rose here and there men who persisted in something like

scientific effort. As early as the ninth century, Bertharius, a monk of

Monte Cassino, prepared two manuscript volumes of prescriptions selected

from ancient writers; other monks studied them somewhat, and, during

succeeding ages, scholars like Hugo, Abbot of St. Denis,--Notker, monk

of St. Gall,--Hildegard, Abbess of Rupertsberg,--Milo, Archbishop of

Beneventum,--and John of St. Amand, Canon of Tournay, did something for

medicine as they understood it. Unfortunately, they generally understood

its theory as a mixture of deductions from Scripture with dogmas from

Galen, and its practice as a mixture of incantations with fetiches.

Even Pope Honorius III did something for the establishment of medical

schools; but he did so much more to place ecclesiastical and theological

fetters upon teachers and taught, that the value of his gifts may well

be doubted. All germs of a higher evolution of medicine were for ages

well kept under by the theological spirit. As far back as the sixth

century so great a man as Pope Gregory I showed himself hostile to the

development of this science. In the beginning of the twelfth century the

Council of Rheims interdicted the study of law and physic to monks, and

a multitude of other councils enforced this decree. About the middle of

the same century St. Bernard still complained that monks had too much to

do with medicine; and a few years later we have decretals like those of

Pope Alexander III forbidding monks to study or practise it. For

many generations there appear evidences of a desire among the more

broad-minded churchmen to allow the cultivation of medical science among

ecclesiastics: Popes like Clement III and Sylvester II seem to have

favoured this, and we even hear of an Archbishop of Canterbury skilled

in medicine; but in the beginning of the thirteenth century the Fourth

Council of the Lateran forbade surgical operations to be practised by

priests, deacons, and subdeacons; and some years later Honorius III

reiterated this decree and extended it. In 1243 the Dominican order

forbade medical treatises to be brought into their monasteries, and

finally all participation of ecclesiastics in the science and art of

medicine was effectually prevented.(305)

(305) For statements as to these decrees of the highest Church and

monastic authorities against medicine and surgery, see Sprengel, Baas,

Geschichte der Medicin, p. 204, and elsewhere; also Buckle, Posthumous

Works, vol. ii, p. 567. For a long list of Church dignitaries who

practised a semi-theological medicine in the Middle Ages, see Baas,

pp. 204, 205. For Bertharius, Hildegard, and others mentioned, see also

Sprengel and other historians of medicine. For clandestine study and

practice of medicine by sundry ecclesiastics in spite of the prohibition

by the Church, see Von Raumer, Hohenstaufen, vol. vi, p. 438. For some

remarks on this subject by an eminent and learned ecclesiastic,

see Ricker, O. S. B., professor in the University of Vienna,

Pastoral-Psychiatrie, 1894, pp. 12,13.

VII. THEOLOGICAL DISCOURAGEMENT OF MEDICINE.

While various churchmen, building better than they knew, thus did

something to lay foundations for medical study, the Church authorities,

as a rule, did even more to thwart it among the very men who, had they

been allowed liberty, would have cultivated it to the highest advantage.

Then, too, we find cropping out every where the feeling that, since

supernatural means are so abundant, there is something irreligious

in seeking cure by natural means: ever and anon we have appeals to

Scripture, and especially to the case of King Asa, who trusted to

physicians rather than to the priests of Jahveh, and so died. Hence it

was that St. Bernard declared that monks who took medicine were guilty

of conduct unbecoming to religion. Even the School of Salerno was held

in aversion by multitudes of strict churchmen, since it prescribed rules

for diet, thereby indicating a belief that diseases arise from natural

causes and not from the malice of the devil: moreover, in the medical

schools Hippocrates was studied, and he had especially declared that

demoniacal possession is "nowise more divine, nowise more infernal, than

any other disease." Hence it was, doubtless, that the Lateran Council,

about the beginning of the thirteenth century, forbade physicians,

under pain of exclusion from the Church, to undertake medical treatment

without calling in ecclesiastical advice.

This view was long cherished in the Church, and nearly two hundred and

fifty years later Pope Pius V revived it by renewing the command of Pope

Innocent and enforcing it with penalties. Not only did Pope Pius order

that all physicians before administering treatment should call in "a

physician of the soul," on the ground, as he declares, that "bodily

infirmity frequently arises from sin," but he ordered that, if at the

end of three days the patient had not made confession to a priest, the

medical man should cease his treatment, under pain of being deprived of

his right to practise, and of expulsion from the faculty if he were a

professor, and that every physician and professor of medicine should

make oath that he was strictly fulfilling these conditions.

Out of this feeling had grown up another practice, which made the

development of medicine still more difficult--the classing of scientific

men generally with sorcerers and magic-mongers: from this largely rose

the charge of atheism against physicians, which ripened into a proverb,

"Where there are three physicians there are two atheists."(306)

(306) "Ubi sunt tres medici ibi sunt duo athei." For the bull of Pius V,

see the Bullarium Romanum, ed. Gaude, Naples, 1882, tom. vii, pp. 430,

431.

Magic was so common a charge that many physicians seemed to believe

it themselves. In the tenth century Gerbert, afterward known as

Pope Sylvester II, was at once suspected of sorcery when he showed a

disposition to adopt scientific methods; in the eleventh century this

charge nearly cost the life of Constantine Africanus when he broke from

the beaten path of medicine; in the thirteenth, it gave Roger Bacon, one

of the greatest benefactors of mankind, many years of imprisonment, and

nearly brought him to the stake: these cases are typical of very many.

Still another charge against physicians who showed a talent for

investigation was that of Mohammedanism and Averroism; and Petrarch

stigmatized Averroists as "men who deny Genesis and bark at

Christ."(307)

(307) For Averroes, see Renan, Averroes et l'Averroisme, Paris, 1861,

pp. 327-335. For a perfectly just statement of the only circumstances

which can justify a charge of atheism, see Rev. Dr. Deems, in Popular

Science Monthly, February, 1876.

The effect of this widespread ecclesiastical opposition was, that for

many centuries the study of medicine was relegated mainly to the lowest

order of practitioners. There was, indeed, one orthodox line of medical

evolution during the later Middle Ages: St. Thomas Aquinas insisted that

the forces of the body are independent of its physical organization,

and that therefore these forces are to be studied by the scholastic

philosophy and the theological method, instead of by researches into the

structure of the body; as a result of this, mingled with survivals of

various pagan superstitions, we have in anatomy and physiology such

doctrines as the increase and decrease of the brain with the phases

of the moon, the ebb and flow of human vitality with the tides of the

ocean, the use of the lungs to fan the heart, the function of the liver

as the seat of love, and that of the spleen as the centre of wit.

Closely connected with these methods of thought was the doctrine of

signatures. It was reasoned that the Almighty must have set his sign

upon the various means of curing disease which he has provided: hence

it was held that bloodroot, on account of its red juice, is good for the

blood; liverwort, having a leaf like the liver, cures diseases of the

liver; eyebright, being marked with a spot like an eye, cures diseases

of the eyes; celandine, having a yellow juice, cures jaundice; bugloss,

resembling a snake's head, cures snakebite; red flannel, looking like

blood, cures blood-taints, and therefore rheumatism; bear's grease,

being taken from an animal thickly covered with hair, is recommended to

persons fearing baldness.(308)

(308) For a summary of the superstitions which arose under the

theological doctrine of signatures, see Dr. Eccles's admirable little

tract on the Evolution of Medical Science, p. 140; see also Scoffern,

Science and Folk Lore, p. 76.

Still another method evolved by this theological pseudoscience was that

of disgusting the demon with the body which he tormented--hence the

patient was made to swallow or apply to himself various unspeakable

ordures, with such medicines as the livers of toads, the blood of frogs

and rats, fibres of the hangman's rope, and ointment made from the

body of gibbeted criminals. Many of these were survivals of heathen

superstitions, but theologic reasoning wrought into them an orthodox

significance. As an example of this mixture of heathen with Christian

magic, we may cite the following from a medieval medical book as a

salve against "nocturnal goblin visitors": "Take hop plant, wormwood,

bishopwort, lupine, ash-throat, henbane, harewort, viper's bugloss,

heathberry plant, cropleek, garlic, grains of hedgerife, githrife, and

fennel. Put these worts into a vessel, set them under the altar, sing

over them nine masses, boil them in butter and sheep's grease, add much

holy salt, strain through a cloth, throw the worts into running water.

If any ill tempting occur to a man, or an elf or goblin night visitors

come, smear his body with this salve, and put it on his eyes, and cense

him with incense, and sign him frequently with the sign of the cross.

His condition will soon be better."(309)

(309) For a list of unmentionable ordures used in Germany near the end

of the seventeenth century, see Lammert, Volksmedizin und medizinischer

Aberglaube in Bayern, Wurzburg, 1869, p. 34, note. For the English

prescription given, see Cockayne, Leechdoms, Wort-cunning, and

Star-craft of Early England, in the Master of the Rolls' series,

London, 1865, vol. ii, pp. 345 and following. Still another of these

prescriptions given by Cockayne covers three or four octavo pages. For

very full details of this sort of sacred pseudo-science in Germany, with

accounts of survivals of it at the present time, see Wuttke, Prof. der

Theologie in Halle, Der Deutsche Volksaberglaube der Gegenwart, Berlin,

1869, passim. For France, see Rambaud, Histoire de la Civilisation

francaise, pp. 371 et seq.

As to surgery, this same amalgamation of theology with survivals of

pagan beliefs continued to check the evolution of medical science down

to the modern epoch. The nominal hostility of the Church to the shedding

of blood withdrew, as we have seen, from surgical practice the great

body of her educated men; hence surgery remained down to the fifteenth

century a despised profession, its practice continued largely in

the hands of charlatans, and down to a very recent period the

name "barber-surgeon" was a survival of this. In such surgery, the

application of various ordures relieved fractures; the touch of the

hangman cured sprains; the breath of a donkey expelled poison; friction

with a dead man's tooth cured toothache.(310)

(310) On the low estate of surgery during the Middle Ages, see

the histories of medicine already cited, and especially Kotelmann,

Gesundheitspflege im Mittelalter, Hamburg, 1890, pp. 216 et seq.