WHEN Voltaire was born, the natural was about the only thing in which
the church did not believe. The monks sold little amulets of consecrated
paper. They would cure diseases. If laid in a cradle they would prevent
a child being bewitched. So, they could be put into houses and barns to
keep devils away, or buried in a field to prevent bad weather, to delay
frost, and to insure good crops. There was a regular formulary by which
they were made, ending with a prayer, after which the amulets were
sprinkled with holy water. The church contended that its servants were
the only legitimate physicians. The priests cured in the name of the
church, and in the name of God, by exorcism, relics, water, salt,
and oil. St. Valentine cured epilepsy, St. Gervasius was good for
rheumatism, St. Michael de Sanatis for cancer, St. Judas for coughs, St.
Ovidius for deafness, St. Sebastian for poisonous bites, St. Apollonia
for toothache, St. Clara for rheum in the eye, St. Hubert for
hydrophobia. Devils were driven out with wax tapers, with incense, with
holy water, by pronouncing prayers. The church, as late as the middle of
the twelfth century, prohibited good Catholics from having anything to
do with physicians.
It was believed that the devils produced storms of wind, of rain and of
fire from heaven; that the atmosphere was a battlefield between angels
and devils; that Lucifer had power to destroy fields and vineyards and
dwellings, and the principal business of the church was to protect the
people from the Devil. This was the origin of church bells. These bells
were sprinkled with holy water, and their clangor cleared the air of
imps and fiends. The bells also prevented storms and lightning. The
church used to anathematize insects. In the sixteenth century, regular
suits were commenced against rats, and judgment was rendered. Every
monastery had its master magician, who sold magic incense, salt, and
tapers, consecrated palms and relics.
Every science was regarded as an outcast, an enemy. Every fact held the
creed of the church in scorn. Investigators were enemies in disguise.
Thinkers were traitors, and the church exerted its vast power for
centuries to prevent the intellectual progress of man. There was no
liberty, no education, no philosophy, no science; nothing but credulity,
ignorance, and superstition. The world was really under the control
of Satan and his agents. The church, for the purpose of increasing her
power, exhausted every means to convince the people of the existence
of witches, devils, and fiends. In this way the church had every enemy
within her power. She simply had to charge him with being a wizard, of
holding communication with devils, and the ignorant mob were ready to
tear him to pieces.
To such an extent was this frightful course pursued, and such was the
prevalence of the belief in the supernatural, that the worship of the
devil was absolutely established. The poor people, brutalized by the
church, filled with fear of Satanic influence, finding that the church
did not protect, as a last resort began to worship the Devil. The power
of the Devil was proven by the Bible. The history of Job, the temptation
of Christ in the desert, the carrying of Christ to the top of
the temple, and hundreds of other instances, were relied upon as
establishing his power; and when people laughed about witches riding
upon anointed sticks in the air, invisible, they were reminded of a like
voyage when the Devil carried Jesus to the pinnacle of the temple.
This frightful doctrine filled every friend with suspicion of his
friend. It the husband denounce the wife, the children the parents,
and the parents the children It destroyed all the sweet relations of
humanity. It did away with justice in the courts. It destroyed the
charity of religion. It broke the bond of friendship. It filled with
poison the golden cup of life. It turned earth into a very hell, peopled
with ignorant, tyrannical, and malicious demons.
Such was the result of a few centuries of Christianity. Such was the
result of a belief in the supernatural. Such was the result of giving
up the evidence of our own senses, and relying upon dreams, visions, and
fears. Such was the result of destroying human reason, of depending upon
the supernatural, of living here for another world instead of for this,
of depending upon priests instead of upon ourselves. The Protestants
vied with the Catholics. Luther stood side by side with the priests
he had deserted, in promoting this belief in devils and fiends. To the
Catholic, every Protestant was possessed by a devil. To the Protestant,
every Catholic was the homestead of a fiend. All order, all regular
succession of causes and effects, were known no more. The natural ceased
to exist. The learned and the ignorant were on a level. The priest had
been caught in the net spread for the peasant, and Christendom was a
vast madhouse, with insane priests for keepers.