THE FOLKLORE OF THE REFORMATION.
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. (1484), to which has been given
the title of "Malleus Maleficorum," or "The Hammer of Witchcraft,"
directed against the practice of sorcery; 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 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 baptised, or had been baptised 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 naive
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 should show no
mercy; I would burn them myself." Black magic or witchcraft he proceeds
to characterise 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 best 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.[18] 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 recognised physical sciences of the age, under the auspices of
which a Copernicus and a Tycho Brahe were born and educated.
FOOTNOTES:
[18] _Cf._ Sebastian Franck, _Chronica_, for an account of a
visit of Paracelsus to Nürnberg.