EUROPE DURING THE DARK AGES.
(CONTINUED.)
GROSS SUPERSTITIONS.--A CRUCIFIX THAT SHED TEARS OF BLOOD.--THE
VIRGIN'S HOUSE CARRIED THROUGH THE AIR BY ANGELS.--SATAN IN THE
FORM OF A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN.--SCENES IN HELL.--THE BURNING OF
WITCHES.--A KING WHO CANNOT WRITE HIS NAME.--FEUDAL LORDS AS
HIGHWAY ROBBERS.--THE SERFDOM OF THE PEASANTS.--RETURN TO CORDOVA.
We promised to make a careful examination into the influence which
the ignorance of the clergy exercised upon the aspect of religion,
upon the morals of the Church, and upon the social, industrial,
political, moral and mental state of the people at large. We fear we
made a rash promise. So heart-rending are the sights we see, if we
are to give a faithful report, those unacquainted with the state of
European civilization during the period which we are traversing, we
fear, may accuse us of exaggeration, or worse still, may think that
we, who belong to the race that suffered most during that period from
the corruption of the Church, are animated by a spirit of revenge,
and, therefore, find intense delight in holding so revolting a picture
before our readers. But, happily, our readers are not composed of
such. We are addressing intelligent people, men and women who know
that our people have suffered too terribly and too unjustly from false
accusations during many, many centuries, to render ourselves guilty of
the same crime; men and women who know, that it is not from choice, but
from historic necessity, that we contrast the social, and moral and
intellectual state of Christian Europe during the Dark Ages, with the
social and moral and intellectual state of Moorish and Jewish Europe of
the same period, to appreciate the better the wonderful civilization of
"_The Jews and Moors in Spain_."
Our search discloses to us the sad and terrible truth that ignorance,
especially active ignorance, is the mother of superstition, and both
the parents of fanaticism, and the offspring of this trio is deliberate
imposture, extortion, corruption, crime, and these, in their turn,
beget the world's misfortunes. This sad truth stares us in the face
whatever church, cathedral, monastery or community we enter. Everywhere
miracles and relics and idolatry. Everywhere the teaching and preaching
of hell and Satan and witchcraft, and of the necessity of blind
credulity and unquestioning belief. Every cathedral and monastery has
its tutelar saint, and every saint his legend, and wondrous accounts
are spread concerning the saint's power, for good or evil, often
fabricated to enrich the church or monastery under his protection.
In Dublin we see the crucifix that sheds tears of blood. In Loretto
we see the house once inhabited by the Virgin, and we were told, that
some angels, chancing to be at Nazareth when the Saracen conquerors
approached, fearing that the sacred relic might fall into their
possession, took the house bodily in their hands, and, carrying it
through the air, deposited it at its present place. In Bavaria they
show us the brazen android which Albertus Magnus had so cunningly
contrived as to serve him for a domestic, and whose garrulity had so
much annoyed the studious Thomas Aquinas. In Alsace the abbot Martin
shows us the following inestimable relics, which he had obtained for
his monastery: a spot of the blood of Jesus, a piece of the true cross,
the arm of the apostle James, part of the skeleton of John the Baptist,
a bottle of milk of the blessed Virgin, and, with an ill-disguised
envy, he told us that a finger of the Holy Ghost is preserved in a
monastery at Jerusalem.
Everywhere we are told that the arch fiend and his innumerable
legions of demons are forever hovering about us, seeking our present
unhappiness and the future ruin of mankind; that we are at no time,
and at no place, safe from them; that we cannot be sufficiently on our
guard against them, for sometimes they assume the shape of a grotesque
and hideous animal; sometimes they appear in the shape of our nearest
and dearest relatives and friends; sometimes as a beautiful woman,
alluring by more than human charms, the unwary to their destruction,
and laying plots, which were but too often successful against the
virtue of the saints; sometimes the Evil One assumes the shape of a
priest, and, in order to bring discredit upon that priest's character,
maliciously visits, in this saintly disguise, some very questionable
places and allows himself to be caught in most disgraceful situations
and environments. Can we imagine an invention more ingenius to hide the
foul practices of the corrupt among the clergy?
Everywhere the clergy finds it a very profitable traffic to teach how
the people might protect themselves against the Evil One. The sign
of the cross, a few drops of Holy water, the name of the Virgin, the
Gospel of St. John around the neck, a rosary, a relic of Christ or of a
saint, suffice to baffle the utmost efforts of diabolic malice, and to
put the Spirits of Evil to an immediate and ignominious flight.
There is not a Church, not a monastery that we enter, but that
our blood is chilled at its fountain, as we gaze upon the ghastly
paintings, representing the horrible tortures of hell, placed
conspicuously for the contemplation of the faithful, or for the fear
of the wicked, or for the gain of the clergy--for the heavier the
purse the church receives, the surer the release. It is impossible
to conceive more ghastly conceptions of the future world than these
pictures evinced, or more hideous calumnies against that Being, who was
supposed to inflict upon His creatures such unspeakable misery. On one
picture the devil is represented bound by red-hot chains, on a burning
gridiron in the center of hell. His hands are free, and with these he
seizes the lost souls, crushes them like grapes against his teeth, and
then draws them by his breath down the fiery cavern of his throat.
Demons with hooks of red-hot iron, plunge souls alternately into fire
and ice. Some of the lost are hung by their tongues, others are sawn
asunder, others are gnawed by serpents, others are beaten together
on an anvil, and welded into a single mass, others are boiled and
strained through a cloth, others are twined in the embraces of demons
whose limbs are of flames. But not only the guilty are represented
suffering thus, but also the innocent, who expiate amidst heart-rending
tortures the guilt of their fathers.[1] A little boy is represented in
his suffering. His eyes are burning like two burning coals. Two long
flashes come out of his ears. Blazing fire rolls out of his mouth. An
infant is represented roasting in a hot oven. It turns and twists, it
beats its head against the roof of the oven in agony of its suffering.
[1] Consult Wall's History of Infant Baptism.
Unable to gaze upon the scene of innocent suffering any longer, we turn
from it, trembling with rage. We ask a priest, who chances to be near,
what fiend could calumniate thus the good God? And smoothly he replies:
"God was very good to this child. Very likely God saw it would get
worse and worse and would never repent, and so it would have to be
punished much more in hell. So God, in his mercy, called it out of the
world in its early childhood."[2]
[2] For full account of the teaching of the Church during
the Dark Ages concerning the suffering in hell, see Lecky's
"History of European Morals," chap iv.
We no longer wonder at the stupidity of the people, at the enormous
wealth, and still greater power of the clergy, when we remember that
the people were inoculated with the belief that the clergy alone could
save them from such eternal tortures, and that money was the safest and
most potent redeemer, and the never failing mediator for effacing the
most monstrous crimes, and for securing ultimate happiness.
We turn from these frightful sights only to encounter more terrible
scenes of misery. So far we had gazed upon purely imaginary suffering,
now we encounter the real, the intensely real. Everywhere we see the
sky lurid from the reflection of the _autos da fe_, on which thousands
of innocently accused victims, suffer the most agonizing and protracted
torments, without exciting the faintest compassion. Everywhere we hear
the prison walls re-echo the piercing shrieks of women, suffering the
tortures preceding their conviction as witches. And once, it was in
Scotland, we were the unfortunate spectators of a sight which we never
shall forget. While the act of burning witches was being preformed
amidst religious ceremonies, with a piercing yell some of the women,
half burnt, broke from the slow fire that consumed them, struggled for
a few moments with despairing energy among the spectators, until, with
wild protestations of innocence, they sank writhing in agony, breathing
their last.
And why are these women burnt by the thousands, everywhere, in Germany,
France, Spain, Italy, Flanders, Sweden, England, Scotland and Ireland?
Because they had entered into a deliberate compact with Satan. They had
been seen riding at midnight through the air on a broomstick or on a
goat. They had worked miracles thus infringing upon the monopoly of the
saints--or had afflicted the country with comets, hailstorms, plagues,
or their neighbors with disease or barrenness. And who invents so
malicious a falsehood? Often the victims themselves, for, suspected or
accused of witchcraft they are at once subjected to tortures, to force
a confession of their guilt, and these are so terrible, that death is
a release, and so they confess, whatever the witch-courts want them to
confess. Many a husband cuts thus the marriage tie which his church had
pronounced indissoluble. Many a dexterous criminal directs a charge of
witchcraft against his accuser, and thus escapes with impunity.
Everywhere we find the whole body of the clergy, from pope to priest,
busy in the chase for gain; what escapes the bishop is snapped up by
the archdeacon, what escapes the archdeacon is nosed and hunted down by
the dean, while a host of minor officials prowl hungrily around these
great marauders. To give money to the priest is everywhere regarded as
the first article of the moral code. In seasons of sickness, of danger,
of sorrow, or of remorse, whenever the fear or the conscience of the
worshiper is awakened he is taught to purchase the favor of the saint.
St. Eligus gives us this definition of a good Christian: "He who comes
frequently to church, who presents an oblation that it may be offered
to God on the altar, who does not taste the fruits of his land till he
has consecrated a part of them to God, who offers presents and tithes
to churches, that on the judgment day he may be able to say: "Give
unto us Lord for we have given unto Thee;" who redeems his soul from
punishment, and finally who can repeat the creeds or the Lord's prayer."
Bad as we find their greed, we find their moral corruption
indescribably worse. Void of every sting of conscience, drunken, lost
in sensuality and open immorality. In Italy, a bishop informs us, that
were he to enforce the canons against unchaste people administering
ecclesiastical rites, no one would be left in the Church, except
the boys. Everywhere, clergymen, sworn to celibacy, take out their
"_culagium_," their license to keep concubines, and more than one
council, and more than one ecclesiastical writer we find speaking of
priestly corruption far greater than simple concubinage, prominently
among whom they mention, Pope John XXIII, abbot elect of St. Augustine,
at Canterbury, the abbot of St. Pelayo, in Spain, Henry III Bishop of
Liege, and they enumerate the countless nunneries, that are degraded
into brothels, and are flagrant for their frequent infanticides.
There is scarcely a need for our reporting concerning the influence,
which this moral depravity of the Church has upon the masses. We find
that the ignorance and the corruption and the bigotry made the people
fully as ignorant and corrupt and vicious. The pernicious doctrine
already adopted in the fourth century, that it is an act of virtue to
deceive and lie, when by that means the interests of the church might
be promoted,[3] leads the people to the conclusion that nothing can be
possibly wrong, which leads to the promotion of the Church's interests
and finances. And so crimes are perpetrated, wrongs committed,
deceptions practiced, vice indulged without a pang of conscience, or a
throb of the gentler emotions. Ignorance deadens every finer feeling,
and religion, instead, of elevating man's moral nature, crushes it by
the opportunities it offers for canceling crime with money, and for
saving the soul from eternal torture and damnation by increasing the
clergy's opportunities for debauchery.
[3] "Mosheim's Ecclesiastical History."
We next look for the intellectual accomplishments, but we look in
vain. The masses are intensely ignorant. The clergy can not instruct
them, neither would they, if they could. Knowledge among the masses
would have seriously interfered with their all-controlling power,
as it really did in later centuries. This ignorance is fully shared
by the secular chiefs of the land. Kings repudiate book-learning as
unworthy of the crown, and warlike nobles despise it as disgraceful to
the sword. It is a rare thing, and not considered an accomplishment,
to find a warrior who can read or write. To suppose that he can write
is to insult him by mistaking him for an ecclesiastic. No less a
personage than Philippe le Bel, the powerful monarch of United France
who conducts foreign wars and exterminates the Templars, signs his
name with the sign of the cross or a rude arrow head, as late as the
thirteenth century. Let us not forget, that nearly three hundred years
earlier in the world's history, we had found public schools, academies,
universities, libraries, poets, artists, scientists and philosophers
flourishing among the Moors and Jews of Cordova--had seen Al Hakem the
Caliph, writing a digest on the fly-leaves of the contents of each of
his books in his great library.
We next look for the Industries, and there is little to be found that
can be honored with that name. A belief prevails among the people that
the millenium, the end of the world, will set in, amidst terrible
sufferings at the year 1000. This belief stifles industry, and property
and wealth are turned over to the Church for the sake of the soul's
release. Next come the Crusades and these sap Europe of the flower of
its people, who leave by the thousands and hundreds of thousands (and
of which numbers but few return), to keep the Moslems out of Jerusalem,
while the aged and the infirm, the women and children, eke out a
miserable existence at home, feeding on beans, vetches, roots, bark of
trees--often horseflesh and mare's milk furnish a delicious repast.
During the intervals between the various Crusades those few who return,
are so accustomed to their roving and plundering life that it is
impossible for them to settle down to mechanical or industrial pursuits.
The Jews devote themselves almost exclusively to the industries,
and for this they suffer much. Commerce is not safe. The feudal
lords descend from their fortresses to pillage the merchant's goods.
The highways are besieged by licensed robbers, who confiscate the
merchandise, murder the owners, or sell them as slaves, or exact
enormous ransoms. Might makes right, and the most powerful are
the most distinguished for their unscrupulous robberies. Their
castles, erected on almost inaccessible heights among the pathless
woods, become the secure receptacles of predatory bands, who spread
terror over the country and make traffic and enterprise insecure
and next to impossible. And as it is on land so it is at sea, where
a vessel is never secure from an attack of the pirates, and where
neither restitution nor punishment of the criminals is obtained from
governments, which sometimes fear the plunderer and sometimes connive
at the offense.
The political state of Europe we find still worse. The word _liberty_
has not yet found its way into the dictionaries of the people. By far
the greater part of society is everywhere bereaved of its personal
liberty.
Everyone that is not Noble is a slave. Warfare is the rule of the day.
The Church tramples upon kings and nobles; these, in their turn,
such is the prestige of the feudal system, tyrannize over the next
lower order, the next lower order apes the example of its superior
upon its inferior, and so on from lower to lower caste, till the
lowest, the peasants, who have sunk into a qualified slavery called
serfdom. The fight for supremacy between Church and State, the dreadful
oppression of the several orders of feudalism, convulses society with
their perennial feuds, the pride of the countries are either cruelly
butchered or employed more frequently in laying waste the fields of
their rivals, or putting the destructive firebrand, or the ruthless
sword upon the prosperity of their foe, than improving their own.
Let this report, meager as it is, suffice. The ignorance and misery and
suffering and cruelties that abound everywhere are too revolting to
tempt a longer stay. Like Ajax, we pray for light. Away from the jaws
of darkness.
Ye sailors, ho! furl your sails, raise the anchor, clear the harbor.
And thou goodly vessel, staunch and strong, hie thee straight across
the foaming deep. And thou, O Aeolus, blow cheerily and lustily thy
southern winds upon us. And thou, O Neptune, speed thou our course,
haste us back again to fair Andalusia, to beauteous Cordova, for there
is no spot on earth like Cordova, "the city of the seven gates," "the
tent of Islam," "the abode of the learned," "the meeting place of the
eminent," the city of parks and palaces, aqueducts and public baths,
the city of chivalrous knights and enchanting ladies.
Aeolus and Neptune answer our prayer. The goodly ship she spins along.
"She walks the waters like a thing of life." Soon the lands we eager
seek will be descried, and, once again upon the sunny shore, we shall
continue our observations, and freely share them with our friend upon
Columbia's virgin soil.
[Illustration]