says, “A monk of St. Anthony, having been at Jerusalem, saw there
several relics, among which was a bit of the finger of the Holy Ghost,
as sound and entire as it had ever been; the snout of the seraphim that
appeared to St. Francis; one of the nails of a cherubim; one of the ribs
of the _Verbum caro factum_, (the Word was made flesh,) some rays of the
star that appeared to the three kings of the east; a phial of St.
Michael’s sweat, when he was fighting against the devil; a hem of
Joseph’s garment, which he wore when he cleaved wood, &c. All which
things,” observes our treasurer of relics, “I have brought with me home
very devoutly.” Henry III. who was deeply tainted with the superstition
of the age, summoned all the great in the kingdom to meet in London.
This summons excited the most general curiosity, and multitudes
appeared. The king then acquainted them that the great master of the
knights templars had sent him a phial containing _a small portion of the
sacred blood of Christ_, which he had shed upon the _cross_! and
_attested to be genuine_ by the seals of the patriarch of Jerusalem, and
others. He commanded a procession on the following day, and, adds the
historian, that though the road between St. Paul’s and Westminster Abbey
was very deep and miry, the king kept his eyes constantly fixed on the
phial. Two monks received it, and deposited the phial in the abbey,
“which made all England shine with glory, dedicating it to God and St.
Edward.”
In his life of Henry VIII. Lord Herbert notices the _great fall of the
price of relics_ at the dissolution of the monasteries. “The respect
given to relics, and some pretended miracles, fell, insomuch as I find
by our records, that a _piece of St. Andrew’s finger_, (covered only
with an ounce of silver,) being laid to pledge by a monastery for forty
pounds, was left unredeemed at the dissolution of the house; the king’s
commissioners, who, upon surrender of any foundation, undertook to pay
the debts, refusing to pay the price again;” that is, they did not
choose to repay the _forty pounds, to receive a piece of the finger of
St. Andrew_. About this time the property of relics suddenly sunk to a
South-Sea bubble; for shortly after the artifice of the Road of Grace,
at Boxley, in Kent, was fully opened to the eye of the populace, and a
far-famed relic at Hales in Gloucestershire, of the blood of Christ, was
at the same time exhibited. It was showed in a phial, and it was
believed that none could see it who were in mortal sin: and after many
trials usually repeated to the same person, the deluded pilgrim at
length went away fully satisfied. This relic was the _blood of a duck_,
renewed every week, and put into a phial; one side of which was
_opaque_, and the other _transparent_; either side of which was turned
to the pilgrim which the monk thought proper. The success of the pilgrim
depended on the oblations he had made. Those who were scanty in their
offerings, were the longest in getting a sight of the blood. When a man
was in despair he usually became generous.
THE END.
W. WILSON, PRINTER, 57, SKINNER-STREET, LONDON.
-----
Footnote 1:
The discipline of the augurs is of very ancient date, having been
prohibited by Moses, in Leviticus. The cup put in Joseph’s sack, was
that used by Joseph to take auguries by. In its more general
signification, augury comprises all the different kinds of divination,
which Varrow distinguishes into four species of augury, according to
the four elements; namely, _pyromancy_, or augury by fire;
_aeromancy_, or augury by the air; _hydromancy_, or augury by the
water; and _geomancy_, or augury by the earth.—See DIVINATION. The
Roman augurs took their presages concerning futurity from birds,
beasts, and the appearances of the heavens, &c.
Footnote 2:
See AUGURS.
Footnote 3:
A coal starting out of the fire _prognosticates_ either a purse or a
coffin, as the imagination may figure either one or the other
represented upon it: the death-watch, a species of ticking spider, the
inseparable companion of old houses and old furniture, is, when heard,
a _sure_ prognostic of a death in the family: the sediment of the
sugar, in the form of froth, rising to the top of a cup of tea, is an
_infallible_ presage of the person going to receive money: the itching
of the palm of the hand, which is to be immediately rubbed on wood,
“that it may come to good,” or on brass, “that it may come to pass,”
&c. is the _certain_ foreboding of being about to have money paid or
otherwise transferred.
Footnote 4:
These are but a very small proportion of the minor species of
superstitions which influence weak and uninstructed minds in all
countries. The vulgar, even in the most enlightened periods, are not
entirely exempt from belief in the powers of sorcery and magic, and
other fantastical and imaginary agencies, such as Exorcisms, Charms,
and Amulets. It is pleasing, however, to contrast the present times,
in which there is almost an extinction of these delusions, with ages
not very remote. It is only 182 years, (counting from 1819) since
great numbers of persons were condemned to death, in the ordinary
course of law, and executed for witchcraft, in England; and only 119
years (from the same date) since the like disgraceful proceedings took
place in Scotland. The like trials, convictions, and executions, took
place in New England, in the end of the 17th century. See _Evelyn’s
Memoirs_, vol. xi. p. 35.
Footnote 5:
Du Cange has remarked, that the common expression, “_May this piece of
bread choke me!_” originates with this custom. The anecdote of Earl
Godwin’s death by swallowing a piece of bread, in making this
asseveration, is recorded in our history. If it be true, it was a
singular misfortune.
Footnote 6:
Dr. Fludd, or, as he stated himself in Latin, _De Fluctibus_, was the
second son of Sir Thomas Fludd, Treasurer of War to Queen Elizabeth,
was born at Milgate in Kent; and died at his own house in
Coleman-Street, September 8, 1637. He was a strenuous supporter of the
Rosicrucian philosophy; was considered a man of some eminence in his
profession, and by no means an insignificant writer.
Footnote 7:
Melancthon was also a believer in judicial astrology, and an
interpreter of dreams. Richelieu and Mazarine were so superstitious as
to employ and pension Morin, another pretender to astrology, who cast
the nativities of these two able politicians. Nor was Tacitus himself,
who generally appears superior to superstition, untainted with this
folly, as may appear from the twenty-second chapter of the sixth book
of his Annals.
Footnote 8:
The noted THUMERSEN, in the seventeenth century, was invested at
Berlin with the respective offices of printer to the court,
bookseller, almanack-maker, astrologer, chemist, and first physician.
Messengers daily arrived from the most respectable houses in Germany,
Poland, Hungary, Denmark, and even from England, for the purpose of
consulting him respecting the future fortunes of new-born infants,
acquainting him with the hour of their nativity, and soliciting his
advice and directions as to their management. Many volumes of this
singular correspondence are still preserved in the Royal library at
Berlin. He died in high reputation and favour with his superstitious
contemporaries; and his astrological Almanack is still published in
some of the less enlightened provinces of Germany.
Footnote 9:
I so well remember the Chaldean predictions to Pompey, to Crassus, and
to this same Cæsar, that none of them should die, but full of years
and glory, and in his house, that I am surprised that there are yet
some persons capable to believe those, whose predictions are every day
contradicted and refuted by the court.
Footnote 10:
Antipater and Achinapolus have shewn, that Genethliology should rather
be founded on the time of the conception than on that of the birth.
Footnote 11:
Astrologers and wise men of the present day, thanks to a statute or
two in the civil code, limit their star-gazing faculties to the making
of calendars or almanacks.
Footnote 12:
In 1523, the astrologers having prophesied incessant rains and fearful
floods, the abbot of St. Bartholomew, in Smithfield, built a house on
Harrow-the-Hill, and stored it with provisions. Many persons followed
his example and repaired to high places. However, no extraordinary
floods appearing, the disappointed soothsayers pacified the people by
owning themselves mistaken just one hundred years in their
calculation.—HALL.
Footnote 13:
From this art of Solomon, exhibited through the medium of a ring or
seal, we have the eastern stories which celebrate the seal of Solomon,
and record the potency of its sway over the various orders of
_demons_, or of genii, who are supposed to be the invincible
tormentors or benefactors of the human race.
Footnote 14:
The discovery of the virtues of the Peruvian bark may here serve as an
instance. The story goes, that an Indian (some say a monkey) being ill
of a fever, quenched his thirst at a pool of water, strongly
impregnated with the bark from some trees having accidentally fallen
into it, and that he was in consequence cured.
Footnote 15:
John Atkins, author of the Navy Surgeon: 1742.
Footnote 16:
Turner, in his collection of Cases, p. 406, gives one of a woman who
died hydrophobical, from a mad dog biting her gown; and of a young man
who died raving mad, from the scratch of a cat, four years after the
accident.
Footnote 17:
This species of delusion reminds us of the Florentine quack, who gave
the countryman his pills, which were to enable him to find his lost
ass. The pills beginning to operate on his road home, obliged him to
retire into a wood, where he actually did find his ass. The clown, as
a matter of course, soon spread the report of the wonderful success of
the empiric, who, no doubt, in consequence of this circumstance,
reaped an ample reward from the proprietors of strayed cattle.
Footnote 18:
James the First wrote a philippic against it, entitled a
“COUNTERBLASTE TO TOBACCO,” in which the royal author, with more
prejudice than dignity, informs his loving subjects, that “_it is a
custome loathsome to the eye, hatefull to the nose, painfull to the
braine, dangerous to the lungs; and in the black stinking fume
thereof, nearest resembling the horrible stygian smoke of the pit that
is bottomlesse_.”
Footnote 19:
The prohibition of the bath was numbered among the restrictions to
which certain priestesses were bound by the rigid rules of their
order.
Footnote 20:
An eminent physician of the fourth century, born at Pergamus, or,
according to others, at Sardis, where he resided for some time.
Footnote 21:
Called Amidenus, from the place of his birth, flourished at
Alexandria, about the end of the fifth century.
Footnote 22:
The word Alchymy seems to be compounded of the Arabic augmentative
particle _al_, and the Latin Kemia or Greek χημια, chemistry. This
etymology, however, is objected to by some, who deny the Arabians any
share in the composition of the word; urging that _alchemia_ occurs in
an author who wrote before the Europeans had any commerce with the
Arabians, or the Arabians any learning, _i. e._ before the time of
Mahomet.
Footnote 23:
Philosoph. Magazine, Vol. vi. p. 383.
Footnote 24:
Descartes imagined that he had found out a diet that would prolong his
life five hundred years.
Footnote 25:
Quædam opera magica mulieribus perfecta fuère, sicut de productione
aquarum reperimus apud Chaldæos; si decem Virgines se ornent,
vestimenta rubra inducant, saltent ita ut una altera impellat, idque
progrediendo et retrogrediendo, digitos denique versus solem certis
signis extendant, ad finem perducta illâ actione, aquas illici et
prodire dicunt. Sic scribunt, si quatuor mulieres in terga jaceant, et
pedes suas cum composione versus cœlum extendant, certa verba, certos
item gestus, adhibeat illas turpi hac actione grandinem decidentem
avertere.—_Tiedman’s “Disputatio de quæstione, quæ fuerit artium
magicarum origo.”_
Footnote 26:
This method of solving the above problem is supported by the authority
of many fathers of the church.
Footnote 27:
Amasis cum frui Amplexibus Ladices nequiret impotentem sese ab ea
redditum contendebat pertinacissime. Vide Herodotum, lib. 2.
Footnote 28:
It is clearly shewn by the earliest records, that the ancients were in
the possession of many powerful remedies; thus Melampus of Argos, the
most ancient Greek physician with whom we are acquainted, is said to
have cured one of the Argonauts of sterility, by administering the
rust of iron in wine for ten days; and the same physician used
Hellebore as a purge, on the daughters of King Prœtus, who were
afflicted with melancholy. Venesection was also a remedy of very early
origin, for Podalerius, on his return from the Trojan war, cured the
daughter of Damethus, who had fallen from a height, by bleeding her in
both arms. Opium, or a preparation of the poppy, was certainly known
in the earliest ages; and it was probably opium that Helen mixed with
wine, and gave to the guests of Menelaus, under the expressive name of
_nepenthe_, (Odyss. Δ,) to drive away their cares, and increase their
hilarity; and this conjecture receives much support from the fact,
that the _nepenthe_ of Homer was obtained from the Egyptian Thebes,
(whence the Tincture of Opium has been called _Thebaic_ Tincture;) and
if the opinion of Dr. Darwin may be credited, the Cumæan Sibyll never
sat on the portending tripod without first swallowing a few drops of
the juice of the cherry-laurel.
“At Phœbi nondum Patiens, immanis in antro,
Bacchatur vates, magnum si pectore possit
Excussisse deum: tanto magis ille fategat
Os rabidum, fera corda domans, fingitque premendo.”
ÆNEID, l. vi. v. 78.
There is reason to believe that the Pagan priesthood were under the
influence of some narcotic during the display of their oracular
powers, but the effects produced would seem rather to resemble those
of opium, or perhaps of stramonium, than of Prussic acid. Monardus
tells us, that the priests of the American Indians, whenever they were
consulted by the chief gentlemen, or _caciques_, as they are called,
took certain leaves of the tobacco, and cast them into the fire, and
then received the smoke which they thus produced in their mouths, in
consequence of which they fell down upon the ground; and that after
having remained for some time in a stupor, they recovered, and
delivered the answers, which they pretended to have received during
their supposed intercourse with the world of spirits. The sedative
powers of the garden lettuce were known in the earliest times. Among
the fables of antiquity we read, that after the death of Adonis, Venus
threw herself upon a bed of lettuces, to lull her grief and repress
her desires. The sea onion, or _squill_, was administered by the
Egyptians in cases of dropsy, under the mystic title of the Eye of
Typhon. The practices of incision and scarification, were employed in
the camp of the Greeks before Troy, and the application of spirit to
wounds, was also understood, for we find the experienced Nestor
applying a cataplasm, composed of cheese, onion, and meal, mixed up
with the wine of Pramnos, to the wounds of Machaon.
Footnote 29:
Æis addatur quod scripsit Necepsos, draconem radios habentem
insculptum, collo suspensum, ita ut contingeret ventriculum, mire ei
prodesse.—TIEDMAN.
Footnote 30:
On the subject of the Jewish magii, the works of Buxtorf, Lightfoot,
Bekker, and others, have been consulted.
Footnote 31:
Les Juifs croient que Lilis veut faire mourir les garçons dans le
huitième jour après leur naissance, et les filles dans le
vingt-unième. Voici le remède des Juifs Allemans pour se préserver de
ce danger. Ils tirent des traits en ronde avec de la craϊe, ou avec
des charbons de bois, sur les quatre murs de la chambre oû est
l’accouchée, et ils écrivent sur chaque trait: _Adam! Eve! qui Lilis
se retire_. Ils écrivent aussi sur le parti de chambre les noms des
trois anges qui président à la médicine, _Senai_, _Sansenai_, et
_Sanmangelof_, ainsi que Lilis elle-même leur apprit qu’il falloit
faire lorsqu’elle espéroit de les faire tout tous noyer dans la mer.
_Elias, as quoted by Becker._
Footnote 32:
This remarkable confession may be found in Menange’s. Observations sur
la langue Françoise, Part II. p. 110.
Footnote 33:
This was written in 1560, and before the era of revolutions had
commenced even among ourselves. He penetrated into the important
principle merely by the force of his own meditation.
Footnote 34:
Vide Lectures on Phrenology, by Drs. Gall and Spurtzheim.
Footnote 35:
This word is supposed to be formed from the Greek ονομα, name; and
μαντεια, divination. There is in fact something rather singular in the
etymology; for, in strictness, Onomancy should rather signify
divination by asses, being formed from oνos, _asinus_ and μαντεια. To
signify divination by names it should be Onomatomancy.
Footnote 36:
PYTHIAN or PYTHIA, in antiquity, the priestess of Apollo, by whom he
delivered oracles. She was thus called from the god himself, who was
styled _Apollo Pythius_, from his slaying the serpent Python; or as
others will have it, αποτου ποδεσδαι, because Apollo, the sun, is the
cause of rottenness; or, according to others, from πυνδανομαι, _I
hear_, because people went to hear and consult his oracles.—The
priestess was to be a pure virgin. She sat on the covercle, or lid, of
a brazen vessel, mounted on a tripod; and thence, after a violent
enthusiasm, she delivered her oracles; _i. e._ she rehearsed a few
ambiguous and obscure verses, which were taken for oracles.
All the Pythiæ did not seem to have had the same talent at poetry, or
to have memory enough to retain their lesson.—Plutarch and Strabo make
mention of poets, who were kept in by Jupiter, as interpreters.
The solemn games instituted in honor of Apollo, and in memory of his
killing the serpent Python with his arrows, were called Pythia or
Pythian games.
Footnote 37:
The art of knowing the humour, temperament, or disposition of a
person, from observation of the lines of the face, and the character
of its members or features, is called Physiognomy. Baptist Porta and
Robert Fludd, are among the top modern authors, and it has since been
revived by Lavater, on this subject. The ancient authors are the
Sophist Adamantius, and Aristotle, whose treatise on Physiognomy is
translated into Latin by de Lacuna.
Footnote 38:
When the thoughts are much troubled, and when a person sleeps without
the circumstance of going to bed, or putting off his clothes, as when
he nods in his chair; it is very difficult, as Hobbes remarks, to
distinguish a dream from a reality. On the contrary, he that composes
himself to sleep, in case of any uncouth or absurd fancy, easily
suspects it to have been a dream.—LEVIATHAN, par. i. c. 1.
Footnote 39:
For the notion of this threefold soul, read the following verses
attributed to Ovid:—
Bis duo sunt nomini: MANES, CARO, SPIRITUS, UMBRA:
Quatuor ista loci bis duo suscipiunt,
Terra legit CARNEM, tumulum circumvolat UMBRA
Orcus habet MANES, SPIRITUS astra petit.
Footnote 40:
Scot’s Discoverie of Witchcraft, book xv. chap. 39; also Discourse on
Devils and Spirits, chap. 28.
Footnote 41:
Philosophy of Apparitions, by Dr. Hibbert.
Footnote 42:
“As I sat in the pantry last night counting my spoons,” says the
butler, in the Comedy of the Drummer, “the candle, methought, burnt
blue, and the spay’d bitch look’d as if she saw something.”
Footnote 43:
The Friend, a series of Essays, by S. T. Coleridge, Esq. vol. I, page
248.
Footnote 44:
“There is a species to whom, in the Highlands, is ascribed the
guardianship or superintendence of a particular clan, or family of
distinction. Thus the family of Gurlinbeg was haunted by a spirit
called Garlen Bodachar; that of the Baron of Kilcharden by Sandear or
Red Hand, a spectre, one of whose hands is as red as blood; that of
Tullochgorum by May Moulach, a female figure, whose left hand and arm
were covered with hair, who is also mentioned as a familiar attendant
upon the clan Grant.” _Sir_ WALTER SCOTT’S BORDER MINSTRELSY.
Footnote 45:
In the year 1646 two hundred persons were tried, condemned, and
executed for witchcraft, at the Suffolk and Essex assizes; and in 1699
five persons were tried by special commission, at Paisley, in
Scotland, condemned and burnt alive, for the same imaginary crime.—
(See HOWELL’S _Letters_.)
Footnote 46:
It is rather an unfortunate circumstance that all the books, (and
there were several,) which treated of the arts of conjuration, as they
were practised among the ancients, not one is now extant, and all that
we know upon that subject has been collected from isolated facts which
have been incidentally mentioned in other writings. From these,
however, it would appear, that many of the deceptions which still
continue to excite astonishment, were then generally known.
Footnote 47:
Sir Gilbert Blane, Bart.
Footnote 48:
Glanvil was chaplain to his Majesty, and a fellow of the Royal
Society, and author of the work in question, entitled “SADUCESMUS
TRIUMPHATUS, or a full and plain evidence concerning witches and
apparitions,” in two parts, “proving partly by holy Scripture, and
partly by a choice collection of modern relations, the real existence
of apparitions, spirits, and witches.” Printed 1700.
Footnote 49:
Webster, another divine, wrote “Criticisms and interpretations of
Scripture,” against the existence of witches, &c.
Footnote 50:
This story must be accounted for some way or other; or belief in the
appearance of the apparitions must be credited. Either the miller
himself was the murderer, or he was privy to it, unperceived by the
actual perpetrators; or he might be an accomplice before the fact, or
at the time it was committed, but without having inflicted any of the
wounds. The compunctious visitings of his troubled conscience, the
dread of the law in the event of the disclosure, coming from any one
but himself, doubtless made him resolve to disburthen his guilty mind;
and pretended supernatural agency was the fittest channel that
presented itself for the occasion. That Walker and Sharp never
confessed any thing, ought not to be matter of wonder. There was no
evidence against them but the miller’s apparition, which, they were
well assured, would not be likely to appear against them; they were
determined therefore not to implicate themselves; well knowing, that
however the case stood, Graime the miller could not be convicted,
because, in the event of his story of the apparition being rejected,
they must be acquitted, although suspicion and the circumstances of
the pregnancy, &c. were against them; and again, if the miller had
declared himself, after this, as evidence for the crown, his
testimony, if taken at all, would be received with the greatest
caution and distrust; the result might, in fact, have been, that the
strongest suspicions would have fallen upon him as the real murderer
of Anne Clarke; for which, under every consideration of the case, he
might not unjustly have been tried, condemned, and executed. The
statement of Lumley proves nothing that was not generally known. That
Anne Clarke was murdered was well known, but by whom nobody ever knew.
She afterwards appeared to the miller; and why to the miller in
preference to any one else, unless he had had the least hand in it?
and with the exception of Sharp and Walker, the only living being who
was thoroughly acquainted with the catastrophe, but who himself was,
in fact, as guilty as either of the other two.
The Mr. Fanhair, who swore he saw “the likeness of a child standing
upon Walker’s shoulders” during the trial, ought to have been freely
blooded, cupped, purged, and dieted, for a month or two, until the
vapours of his infantile imagination had learned to condense
themselves within their proper focus: then, and then only, might his
oath have been listened to. Besides, the _child_ could only be a
fœtus, at what period of gestation we are not told, and to have
appeared in proper form, it ought to have had its principal appendage
with it—the mother. The two, however, might have been two heavy for
Walker’s shoulders: nevertheless, the gallantry of the times,
certainly, would not have refused her a seat in the dock alongside her
guilty paramour; or a chair in the witness’-box, if she came to appear
as evidence against him.