THE FOLKLORE OF REFORMATION GERMANY
Now in the hands of all men, the Bible was not made the basis of
doctrinal opinions alone. It lent its support to many of the popular
superstitions of the time, and in addition it served as the
starting-point for new superstitions and for new developments of the
older ones. The Pan-dæmonism of the New Testament, with its
wonder-workings by devilish agencies, its exorcisms of evil spirits
and the like, could not fail to have a deep effect on the popular
mind. The authority that the book believed to be divinely inspired
necessarily lent to such beliefs gave a vividness to the popular
conception of the devil and his angels, which is apparent throughout
the whole movement of the Reformation, and not least in the utterances
of the great Luther himself. Indeed, with the Reformation there comes
a complete change over the popular conception of the devil and
diabolical influences.
It is true that the judicial pursuit of witches and witchcraft, in
the earlier Middle Ages only a sporadic incident, received a great
impulse from the Bull of Pope Innocent VIII (Dec. 5, 1484), entitled
_Summis Desideruntes_, to which has been given the title of _Malleus
Maleficorum_, or _The Hammer of Sorcerers_, directed against the
practice of witchcraft; but it was especially amongst the men of the
New Spirit that the belief in the prevalence of compacts with the
devil, and the necessity for suppressing them, took root, and led to
the horrible persecutions that distinguished the "Reformed" Churches
on the whole even more than the Catholic.
Luther himself had a vivid belief, tinging all his views and actions,
in the ubiquity of the devil and his myrmidons. "The devils," says he,
"are near us, and do cunningly contrive every moment without ceasing
against our life, our salvation, and our blessedness.... In woods,
waters, and wastes, and in damp, marshy places, there are many devils
that seek to harm men. In the black and thick clouds, too, there are
some that make storms, hail, lightning, and thunder, that poison the
air and the pastures. When such things happen, the philosophers and
the physicians ascribe them to the stars, and show I know not what
causes for such misfortunes and plagues." Luther relates numerous
instances of personal encounters that he himself had had with the
devil. A nobleman invited him, with other learned men from the
University of Wittenberg, to take part in a hare hunt. A large, fine
hare and a fox crossed the path. The nobleman, mounted on a strong,
healthy steed, dashed after them, when, suddenly, his horse fell dead
beneath him, and the fox and the hare flew up in the air and vanished.
"For," says Luther, "they were devilish spectres."
Again, on another occasion, he was at Eisleben on the occasion of
another hare-hunt, when the nobleman succeeded in killing eight hares,
which were, on their return home, duly hung up for the next day's
meal. On the following morning, horses' heads were found in their
place. "In mines," says Luther, "the devil oftentimes deceives men
with a false appearance of gold." All disease and all misfortune were
the direct work of the devil; God, who was all good, could not produce
either. Luther gives a long history of how he was called to a parish
priest, who complained of the devil's having created a disturbance in
his house by throwing the pots and pans about, and so forth, and of
how he advised the priest to exorcise the fiend by invoking his own
authority as a pastor of the Church.
At the Wartburg, Luther complained of having been very much troubled
by the Satanic arts. When he was at work upon his translation of the
Bible, or upon his sermons, or engaged in his devotions, the devil was
always making disturbances on the stairs or in the room. One day,
after a hard spell of study, he lay down to sleep in his bed, when the
devil began pelting him with hazel-nuts, a sack of which had been
brought to him a few hours before by an attendant. He invoked,
however, the name of Christ, and lay down again in bed. There were
other more curious and more doubtful recipes for driving away Satan
and his emissaries. Luther is never tired of urging that contemptuous
treatment and rude chaff are among the most efficacious methods.
There was, he relates, a poor soothsayer, to whom the devil came in
visible form, and offered great wealth provided that he would deny
Christ and never more do penance. The devil provided him with a
crystal, by which he could foretell events, and thus become rich. This
he did; but Nemesis awaited him, for the devil deceived him one day,
and caused him to denounce certain innocent persons as thieves. In
consequence, he was thrown into prison, where he revealed the compact
that he had made, and called for a confessor. The two chief forms in
which the devil appeared were, according to Luther, those of a snake
and a sheep. He further goes into the question of the population of
devils in different countries. On the top of the Pilatus at Luzern, he
says, is a black pond, which is one of the devil's favourite abodes.
In Luther's own country there is also a high mountain, the
Poltersberg, with a similar pond. When a stone is thrown into this
pond, a great tempest arises, which often devastates the whole
neighbourhood. He also alleges Prussia to be full of evil spirits
(!!).
Devilish changelings, Luther said, were often placed by Satan in the
cradles of human children. "Some maids he often plunges into the
water, and keeps them with him until they have borne a child." These
children are placed in the beds of mortals, and the true children are
taken out and hurried away. "But," he adds, "such changelings are said
not to live more than to the eighteenth or nineteenth year." As a
practical application of this, it may be mentioned that Luther advised
the drowning of a certain child of twelve years old, on the ground of
its being a devil's changeling. Somnambulism is, with Luther, the
result of diabolical agency. "Formerly," says he, "the Papists, being
superstitious people, alleged that persons thus afflicted had not been
properly baptized, or had been baptized by a drunken priest." The
irony of the reference to superstition, considering the "great
reformer's" own position, will not be lost upon the reader.
Thus, not only is the devil the cause of pestilence, but he is also
the immediate agent of nightmare and of nightsweats. At Mölburg in
Thüringen, near Erfurt, a piper, who was accustomed to pipe at
weddings, complained to his priest that the devil had threatened to
carry him away and destroy him, on the ground of a practical joke
played upon some companions, to wit, for having mixed horse-dung with
their wine at a drinking bout. The priest consoled him with many
passages of Scripture anent the devil and his ways, with the result
that the piper expressed himself satisfied as regarded the welfare of
his soul, but apprehensive as regarded that of his body, which was, he
asserted, hopelessly the prey of the devil. In consequence of this, he
insisted on partaking of the Sacrament. The devil had indicated to him
when he was going to be fetched, and watchers were accordingly placed
in his room, who sat in their armour and with their weapons, and read
the Bible to him. Finally, one Saturday at midnight, a violent storm
arose, that blew out the lights in the room, and hurled the luckless
victim out of a narrow window into the street. The sound of fighting
and of armed men was heard, but the piper had disappeared. The next
morning he was found in a neighbouring ditch, with his arms stretched
out in the form of a cross, dead and coal-black. Luther vouches for
the truth of this story, which he alleges to have been told him by a
parish priest of Gotha, who had himself heard it from the parish
priest of Mölburg, where the event was said to have taken place.
Amongst the numerous anecdotes of a supernatural character told by
"Dr. Martin" is one of a "Poltergeist," or "Robin Goodfellow," who was
exorcised by two monks from the guest-chamber of an inn, and who
offered his services to them in the monastery. They gave him a corner
in the kitchen. The serving-boy used to torment him by throwing dirty
water over him. After unavailing protests, the spirit hung the boy up
to a beam, but let him down again before serious harm resulted. Luther
states that this "brownie" was well known by sight in the neighbouring
town (the name of which he does not give). But by far the larger
number of his stories, which, be it observed, are warranted as
ordinary occurrences, as to the possibility of which there was no
question, are coloured by that more sinister side of supernaturalism
so much emphasised by the new theology.
The mediæval devil was, for the most part, himself little more than a
prankish Rübezahl, or Robin Goodfellow; the new Satan of the
Reformers was, in very deed, an arch-fiend, the enemy of the human
race, with whom no truce or parley might be held. The old folklore
belief in _incubi_ and _succubi_ as the parents of changelings is
brought into connection with the theory of direct diabolic begettal.
Thus Luther relates how Friedrich, the Elector of Saxony, told him of
a noble family that had sprung from a _succubus_: "Just," says he, "as
the Melusina at Luxembourg was also such a _succubus_, or devil." In
the case referred to, the _succubus_ assumed the shape of the man's
dead wife, and lived with him and bore him children, until, one day,
he swore at her, when she vanished, leaving only her clothes behind.
After giving it as his opinion that all such beings and their
offspring are wiles of the devil, he proceeds: "It is truly a grievous
thing that the devil can so plague men that he begetteth children in
their likeness. It is even so with the nixies in the water, that lure
a man therein, in the shape of wife or maid, with whom he doth dally
and begetteth offspring of them." The change whereby the beings of the
old naïve folklore are transformed into the devil or his agents is
significant of that darker side of the new theology, which was
destined to issue in those horrors of the witchcraft-mania that
reached their height at the beginning of the following century.
One more story of a "changeling" before we leave the subject. Luther
gives us the following as having come to his knowledge near
Halberstadt, in Saxony. A peasant had a baby, who sucked out its
mother and five nurses, besides eating a great deal. Concluding that
it was a changeling, the peasant sought the advice of his neighbours,
who suggested that he should take it on a pilgrimage to a neighbouring
shrine of the Mother of God. While he was crossing a brook on the way
an impish voice from under the water called out to the infant, whom he
was carrying in a basket. The brat answered from within the basket,
"Ho, ho!" and the peasant was unspeakably shocked. When the voice from
the water proceeded to ask the child what it was after, and received
the answer from the hitherto inarticulate babe that it was going to be
laid on the shrine of the Mother of God, to the end that it might
prosper, the peasant could stand it no longer, and flung basket and
baby into the brook. The changeling and the little devil played for a
few moments with each other, rolling over and over, and crying, "Ho,
ho, ho!" and then they disappeared together. Luther says that these
devilish brats may be generally known by their eating and drinking too
much, and especially by their exhausting their mother's milk, but they
may not develop any certain signs of their true parentage until
eighteen or nineteen years old. The Princess of Anhalt had a child
which Luther imagined to be a changeling, and he therefore advised its
being drowned, alleging that such creatures were only lumps of flesh
animated by the devil or his angels. Some one spoke of a monster which
infested the Netherlands, and which went about smelling at people like
a dog, and whoever it smelt died. But those that were smelt did not
see it, albeit the bystanders did. The people had recourse to vigils
and masses. Luther improved the occasion to protest against the
"superstition" of masses for the dead, and to insist upon his
favourite dogma of faith as the true defence against assaults of the
devil.
Among the numerous stories of Satanic compacts, we are told of a monk
who ate up a load of hay, of a debtor who bit off the leg of his
Hebrew creditor and ran off to avoid payment, and of a woman who
bewitched her husband so that he vomited lizards. Luther observes,
with especial reference to this last case, that lawyers and judges
were far too pedantic with their witnesses and with their evidence;
that the devil hardens his clients against torture, and that the
refusal to confess under torture ought to be of itself sufficient
proof of dealings with the Prince of Darkness. "Towards such," says
he, "we would show no mercy; I would burn them myself." Black magic or
witchcraft he proceeds to characterize as the greatest sin a human
being can be guilty of, as, in fact, high treason against God
Himself--_crimen læsæ majestatis divinæ_.
The conversation closes with a story of how Maximilian's father, the
Emperor Friedrich, who seems to have obtained a reputation for magic
arts, invited a well-known magician to a banquet, and on his arrival
fixed claws on his hands and hoofs on his feet by his cunning. His
guest, being ashamed, tried to hide the claws under the table as long
as he could, but finally he had to show them, to his great
discomfiture. But he determined to have his revenge, and asked his
host whether he would permit him to give proofs of his own skill. The
Emperor assenting, there at once arose a great noise outside the
window. Friedrich sprang up from the table, and leaned out of the
casement to see what was the matter. Immediately an enormous pair of
stag's horns appeared on his head, so that he could not draw it back.
Finding the state of the case, the Emperor exclaimed: "Rid me of them
again! Thou hast won!" Luther's comment on this was that he was always
glad to see one devil getting the better of another, as it showed
that some were stronger than others.
All this belongs, roughly speaking, to the side of the matter which
regards popular theology; but there is another side which is connected
more especially with the New Learning. This other school, which sought
to bring the somewhat elastic elements of the magical theory of the
universe into the semblance of a systematic whole, is associated with
such names as those of Paracelsus, Cornelius Agrippa, and the Abbot
von Trittenheim. The fame of the first-named was so great throughout
Germany that when he visited any town the occasion was looked upon as
an event of exceeding importance.[12] Paracelsus fully shared in the
beliefs of his age, in spite of his brilliant insights on certain
occasions. What his science was like may be imagined when we learn
that he seriously speaks of animals who conceive through the mouth of
basilisks whose glance is deadly, of petrified storks changed into
snakes, of the stillborn young of the lion which are afterwards
brought to life by the roar of their sire, of frogs falling in a
shower of rain, of ducks transformed into frogs, and of men born from
beasts; the menstruation of women he regarded as a venom whence
proceeded flies, spiders, earwigs, and all sorts of loathsome vermin;
night was caused, not by the absence of the sun, but by the presence
of the stars, which were the positive cause of the darkness. He
relates having seen a magnet capable of attracting the eyeball from
its socket as far as the tip of the nose; he knows of salves to close
the mouth so effectually that it has to be broken open again by
mechanical means, and he writes learnedly on the infallible signs of
witchcraft. By mixing horse-dung with human semen he believed he was
able to produce a medium from which, by chemical treatment in a
retort, a diminutive human being, or _homunculus_, as he called it,
could be produced. The spirits of the elements, the sylphs of the air,
the gnomes of the earth, the salamanders of the fire, and the undines
of the water, were to him real and undoubted existences in Nature.
Strange as all these beliefs seem to us now, they were a very real
factor in the intellectual conceptions of the Renaissance period, no
less than of the Middle Ages, and amidst them there is to be found at
times a foreshadowing of more modern knowledge. Many other persons
were also more or less associated with the magical school, amongst
them Franz von Sickingen. Reuchlin himself, by his Hebrew studies, and
especially by his introduction of the Kabbala to Gentile readers,
also contributed a not unimportant influence in determining the course
of the movement. The line between the so-called black magic, or
operations conducted through the direct agency of evil spirits, and
white magic, which sought to subject Nature to the human will by the
discovery of her mystical and secret laws, or the character of the
quasi-personified intelligent principles under whose form Nature
presented herself to their minds, had never throughout the Middle Ages
been very clearly defined. The one always had a tendency to shade off
into the other, so that even Roger Bacon's practices were, although
not condemned, at least looked upon somewhat doubtfully by the Church.
At the time of which we treat, however, the interest in such matters
had become universal amongst all intelligent persons. The scientific
imagination at the close of the Middle Ages and during the Renaissance
period was mainly occupied with three questions: the discovery of the
means of transmuting the baser metals into gold, or otherwise of
producing that object of universal desire; to discover the Elixir
Vitæ, by which was generally understood the invention of a drug which
would have the effect of curing all diseases, restoring man to
perennial youth, and, in short, prolonging human life indefinitely;
and, finally, the search for the Philosopher's Stone, the happy
possessor of which would not only be able to achieve the first two,
but also, since it was supposed to contain the quintessence of all the
metals, and therefore of all the planetary influences to which the
metals corresponded, would have at his command all the forces which
mould the destinies of men. In especial connection with the latter
object of research may be noted the universal interest in astrology,
whose practitioners were to be found at every Court, from that of the
Emperor himself to that of the most insignificant prince or princelet,
and whose advice was sought and carefully heeded on all important
occasions. Alchemy and astrology were thus the recognized physical
sciences of the age, under the auspices of which a Copernicus and a
Tycho Brahe were born and educated.
FOOTNOTES:
[12] Cf. Sebastian Franck, _Chronica_, for an account of a visit of
Paracelsus to Nürnberg.