girl of Fulton, who was married to Franklin Foster of that place on
Monday, has been placed in the State Industrial School in Rochester
under sentence by Police Justice Spencer of Fulton. Foster is a widower
with three children. The minister at Fairdale who performed the
ceremony is said to have been fined $3 for cruelty to children. The
poor authorities arrested the young wife for vagrancy.
[97] Africa, Australia, India, Canada, the United States among the
number.
[98] Who gave seventeen years of her life to work for the overthrow of
government legislation of vice in England.
[99]—1. To treat all women with respect, and endeavor to protect them
from wrong and degradation.
2. To endeavor to put down all indecent language and coarse jests.
3. To maintain the law of purity as equally binding upon men and women.
4. To endeavor to spread these principles among my companions, and try
to help my younger brothers.
5. To use every possible means to fulfill the command: “Keep Thyself
Pure.”
[100] The women claimed the right to baptize their own sex. But the
bishops and presbyters did not care to be released from the pleasant
duty of baptizing the female converts. Waite.—_Hist. of Christian
Religion to A.D. 200_, p. 23.
The Constitution of the Church of Alexandria, which is thought to
have been established about the year 200, required the applicant for
baptism to be divested of clothing, and after the ordinance had been
administered, to be anointed with oil.—_Ibid_, p. 384-5.
The converts were first exorcised of the evil spirits that were
supposed to inhabit them; then, after undressing and being baptized,
they were anointed with oil.—_Bunsen’s Christianity of Mankind_, Vol.
VII, p. 386-393; _3d Vol. Analecta_.
Women were baptized quite naked in the presence of these
men.—_Philosophical Dictionary._
Some learned men have enacted that in primitive churches the persons
to be baptized, of whatever age or sex, should be quite naked.
Pike.—_History of Crime in England._ See Joseph Vicecomes.—_De Ritibus
Baptismi._ Varrius.—_Thesibus de Baptisme._
[101] Undisguised sensuality reached a point we can scarcely conceive.
Women were sometimes brought naked upon the stage. By a curious
association of ideas the theater was still intimately connected with
religious observance. _Rationalism in Europe_, 2-288.
[102] Catharine, the first wife of Peter the Great, was received into
the Greek Church by a rite nearly approaching the primitive customs of
the Christian Church. New converts to that church are plunged three
times naked in a river or into a large tub of cold water. Whatever is
the conditions, age or sex of the convert, this indecent ceremony is
never dispensed with. The effrontery of a pope (priests of the Greek
Church are thus called), sets at defiance all the reasons which decency
and modesty never cease to use against the absurdity and impudence of
this shameful ceremony. Count Segur.—_Woman’s Condition and Influence
in Society._
CHAPTER FIVE
[1] Black was hated as the colors of the devil. In the same manner red
was hated in Egypt as the color of Typhon.
[2] At what date then did the witch appear? In the age of
despair, of that deep despair which the guilt of the church
engendered. Unfalteringly I say, the witch is a crime of their own
making.—_Michelet._
[3] “It is not a little remarkable, though perfectly natural, that the
introduction of the cat gave a new impulse to tales and fears of ghosts
and enchantments. The sly, creeping, nocturnal grimalkin took rank at
once with owls and bats, and soon surpassed them both as an exponent
of all that is weird and supernatural. Entirely new conceptions of
witchcraft were gained for the world when the black cat appeared
upon the scene with her swollen tail, glistening eyes and unearthy
yell.”—_Ex._
[4] Steevens says it was permitted to a witch to take on a cattes body
nine times.—_Brand_, 3, 89-90.
[5] Mr. E. F. Spicer, a taxidermist of Birmingham, whose great
specialty is the artistic preparation of kittens for sale, will not
purchase black ones, as he finds the superstition against black cats
interferes with their sale.—“Pall Mall Gazette,” Nov. 13, 1886. But the
United States, less superstitious, has recently witnessed the formation
of a “Consolidated Cat Company” upon Puget Sound for the special
propagation of black cats to be raised for their fur.
[6] _City of God_, Lib. XVIII. Charles F. Lummis, in a recent work,
_Some Strange Corners of Our Country, the Wonderland of the Southwest_,
refers to the power of the shamans to turn themselves at will into any
animal shape, as a wolf, bear or dog.
[7] Italian women usually became cats. The Witch Hammer mentioned
a belief in Lycanthropy and Metamorphosis. It gave the story of a
countryman who was assaulted by three cats. He wounded them, after
which three infamous witches were found wounded and bleeding.
[8] For a full account of this madness, and other forms that sometimes
attacked whole communities during the middle Christian ages, see
“Hecker.—_Epidemics of the Middle Ages._”
[9] The conventicle of witches was said to be held on Mt. Atlas, “to
which they rode upon a goat, a night crow, or an enchanted staff, or
bestriding a broom staff. Sundry speeches belonged to these witches,
the words whereof were neither Hebrew, Greek, Latin, French, Spanish,
Italian, nor indeed deriving their Etymology from any known language.”
[10] _St. Gregory of Nyassa_, a canonized saint, the only theologian
to whom the church (except St. John) has ever allowed the title of “The
Divine,” was a member of that council, aiding in the preparation of the
Nicene Creed. It is a significant fact that a great number of public
women, “an immense number,” congregated at Nice during the sessions of
this council.
[11] In Guernsey a mother and her two daughters were brought to the
stake; one of the latter, a married woman with child, was delivered in
the midst of her torments, and the infant, just rescued, was tossed
back into the flames by a priest with the cry, “One heretic the less.”
[12] “Old writers declared that women have been more addicted to
these devilish arts than men, was manifest by ‘many grave authors,’
among whom Diodorus, Sindas, Pliny and St. Augustine were mentioned.
Quintillian declared theft more prevalent among men, but witchcraft
especially a sin of women.”
[13] Lea.—_Superstition and Force._
[14] Certain forms of ordeal, such as the ordinary ones of fire and
water, seem to have owed their origin to the trials passed by the
candidate for admission into the ancient mysteries, as Lea has also
conjectured. During the mysteries of Isis, the candidate was compelled
to descend into dark dungeons of unknown depth, to cross bars of
red-hot iron, to plunge into a rapid stream at seeming hazard of life,
to hang suspended in mid-air while the entrance into other mysteries
confronted the candidate with howling wild beasts and frightful
serpents. All who passed the ancient ordeals in safety, were regarded
as holy and acceptable to the Deity, but not so under Christian ordeal,
its intention being conviction of the accused. Those who proved their
innocence by carrying red-hot iron uninjured for three paces and the
court was thus forced to acquit, or who passed through other forms of
torture without confession were still regarded with suspicion as having
been aided by Satan, and the sparing of their lives was to the scandal
of the faithful.
[15] Woman was represented as the door of hell, as the mother of all
human ill. She should be ashamed at the very thought she is a woman.
She should live in continual penance on account of the curses she has
brought upon the world. She should be especially ashamed of her beauty,
for it is the most potent instrument of the demon.—_Hist. European
Morals_, Vol. 2, p. 358.
[16] Witchcraft was supposed to have power of subverting
religion.—_Montesquieu._
[17] The question why the immense majority of those who were accused
should be women, early attracted attention; it was answered by
the inherent wickedness of the sex, which had its influence in
pre-disposing men to believe in witches, and also in producing the
extreme callousness with which the sufferings of the victims were
contemplated.—_Rationalism in Europe_ 1, 88.
[18] 18 mo. An unusually small size for that period.
[19] (_Witch Hammer._)
[20] The Court of Rome was fully apprized that power cannot
be maintained without property, and thereupon its attention
began very early to be riveted upon every method that promised
pecuniary advantage. All the wealth of Christendom was gradually
drawn by a thousand channels into the coffers of the Holy See.
Blackstone.—_Commentaries_ 4, 106. “The church forfeited the wizard’s
property to the judge and the prosecutor. Wherever the church law was
enforced, the trials for witchcraft waxed numerous and brought much
wealth to the clergy. Wherever the lay tribunal claimed the management
of those trials, they grew scarce and disappeared.”
[21] Burning Place of the Cross.
[22] A _MS._ upholding the burning of witches as heretics, written in
1450 by the _Dominican Brother Hieronymes Visconti_, of Milan, is among
the treasures of the _White Library_, recently presented to Cornell
University.
[23] It shall not be amiss to insert among these what I have heard
concerning a witch of Scotland: One of that countrie (as by report
there are too many) being for no goodness of the judges of Assize,
arrayed, convicted and condemned to be burnt, and the next day,
according to her judgment, brought and tied to the stake, the reeds
and fagots placed around about her, and the executioner ready to give
fire (for by no persuasion of her ghostly fathers, nor importunities
of the sheriff, she could be wrought to confess anything) she now at
the last cast to take her farewell of the world, casting her eye at
one side upon her only sonne, and calls to him, desiring him verie
earnestly as his last dutie to her to bring her any water, or the least
quantity of licuor (be it never so small), to comfort her, for she was
so extremely athirst, at which he, shaking his head, said nothing; she
still importuned him in these words: “Oh, my deere sonne help me to any
drinke, be it never so little, for I am most extremely drie, oh drie,
drie:” to which the young fellow answered, “by no means, deere mother
will I do you that wrong; _for the drier you are (no doubt) you will
burne the better_.” Heywoode—_History of Women_, Lib. 9, p. 406.
[24] Lenormant.—_Chaldean Magic and Sorcery_, 385.
[25] _Institutes of Scotland._
[26] At _Bamburg, Germany_, an original record of twenty-nine
burnings in nineteen months, 162 persons in all, mentions the infant
daughter of Dr. Schutz as a victim of the twenty-eighth burning.
Hauber.—_Bibliotheca Magica._
[27] In those terrible trials presided over by Pierre de Lancre, it was
asserted that hundreds of girls and boys flocked to the indescribable
Sabbats of Labourd. The Venetians’ record the story of a little girl of
nine years who raised a great tempest, and who like her mother was a
witch. Signor Bernoni.—_Folk Lore._
[28] Some very strange stories of such power at the present time have
become known to the author, one from the lips of a literary gentleman
in New York City, this man of undoubted veracity declaring that he had
seen his own father extend his hand under a cloudless sky and produce
rain. A physician of prominence in a western city asserts that a most
destructive cyclone, known to the Signal Service Bureau as “The Great
Cyclone,” was brought about by means of magical formulae, made use of
by a school girl in a spirit of ignorant bravado.
[29] These and similar powers known as magical, are given as pertaining
to the Pueblo Indians, by Charles F. Lummis, in _Some Strange Corners
of Our Country_, pub. 1892. A friend of the author witnessed rain thus
produced by a very aged Iowa Indian a few years since.
[30] A _Hindoo Scripture_ whose name signifies knowledge.—Max Muller.
[31] _Isis Unveiled_, I, 354.
[32] Of which the tricks of Halloween may be a memento.
[33] _Anacalypsis_, Vol. I. p. 35.
[34] Bacchus was not originally the god of wine, but signified books.
Instruction of old, when learning was a secret science, was given by
means of leaves. “Bacchus Sabiesa” really signified “book wise” or
learned, and the midsummer day festival was celebrated in honor of
learning. In the Anacalypsis Higgins says: “From Celland I learn that
in Celtic, Sab means wise, whence Saba and Sabasius, no doubt wise in
the stars. From this comes the Sabbath day, or day dedicated to wisdom,
and the Sabbat, a species of French masonry, an account of which may be
seen in _Dulare’s History of Paris_. Sunday was the day of instruction
of the Druids, whence it was called Sabs.—_Ibid_, I. 716.
[35] From the preachment of the Sabs, or Sages, or wise Segent
Sarcedos.—_Ibid_, I, 716.
[36] The only physician of the people for a thousand years was the
witch. The emperors, kings, popes and richer barons had indeed the
doctors of Salermo, then Moors and Jews, but the bulk of the people in
every state; the world, it might as well be called, consulted none but
the _Sages_ or wise women. Michelet—_La Sorciere._
[37] I make no doubt that his (Paracelsus) admirable and masterly work
on the Diseases of Women, the first written on this theme, so large, so
deep, so tender, came forth from his special experience of those women
to whom others went for aid, the witches, who acted as midwives, for
never in those days was a male physician admitted to the women.—_Ibid._
[38] Within the past fifty years the death rate in childbirth was forty
in a thousand, an enormous mortality, and although the advances in
medical knowledge have somewhat lessened the rate, more women still
lose their lives during childbirth than soldiers in battle.
[39] In childbirth a motherly hand instilled the gentle poison, casting
the mother herself into a sleep, and soothing the infant’s passage,
after the manner of modern chloroform, into the world.—_Michelet._
[40] _Poruchet Solenases._
[41] Alexander.—_History of Women._
[42] You will hardly believe it, but I saw a real witch’s skull, the
other evening, at a supper party I had the pleasure of attending. It
was at the house of Dr. Dow, a medical gentleman of culture and great
skill in his profession here. You will admit that a skull is not a
pleasant thing to exhibit in a parlor, and some of the ladies did not
care about seeing it; but the majority did, and you know one cannot
see a witch’s skull every day. So, after a little hesitation and
persuasion on the part of the doctor, he produced the uncanny thing
and gave us its history, or rather that of the witch. She lived at
Terryburn, a little place near here. One day it came to the ears of the
kirk session of the parish that she had had several interviews with
his Satanic Majesty. Strange enough, when the woman was brought before
that body—which seems to have been all-powerful in the several parishes
in those days—and accused of it, she at once admitted the charge to be
true. The poor soul, who could have been nothing else than an idiot,
as the doctor pointed out from the very low forehead and small brain
cavity, was sentenced to be prevented from going to sleep; or in other
words, tortured to death, and the desired end was attained in about
five days, her body being buried below high-water mark.
Her name was Lilias Adie, and there is no doubt that she was only a
harmless imbecile. The skull, and also a piece of the coffin, were
presented to the doctor by a friend who had read in the kirk session
records an account of the trial, and went to the spot stated as
being the place of burial. The remains were found by him exactly as
indicated, although there was nothing to mark their resting place. One
would have thought that after the lapse of so many years it would be
exceedingly difficult to find them, but you know things do not undergo
such radical changes in this country as they do in America.—From a
traveler’s letter in the “Syracuse Journal,” August 22, 1881.
Almost indistinguished from the belief in witchcraft was the belief
that persons subject to epilepsy, mania or any form of mental weakness,
were possessed of a devil who could be expelled by certain religious
ceremonies. Pike.—_History of Crime in England_, Vol. pp. 7-8.
[43] The mysteries of the human conscience and of human motives are
well nigh inscrutable, and it may be shocking to assert that these
customs of unmitigated wrong are indirectly traceable to that religion
of which the two great commandments were that man should love his
neighbor as himself. Lea.—_Superstition and Force_, 53.
[44] Fox’s _Book of Martyrs_, gives account of persons brought into
court upon litters six months after having been subjected to the rack.
[45] In this case both men and women says Johannus Mergerus, author of
a History of Flanders.
[46] Adrianus Ferrens.
[47] St. Bernard exorcised a demon Incubus, who for six years
maintained commerce with a woman, who could not get rid of him.
Lea.—_Studies in Church History._
[48] It was observed they (devils) had a peculiar attachment to women
with beautiful hair, and it was an old Catholic belief that St. Paul
alluded to this in that somewhat obscure passage in which he exhorts
women to cover their heads because of the angels.—_Sprangler._
[49] The attention of scientific men and governments has recently been
directed to what are now called “_The Accursed Sciences_,” under whose
action certain crimes have been committed from “suggestion,” the hand
which executed being only that of an irresponsible automaton, whose
memory preserves no traces of it. The French Academy has just been
debating the question—how far a hypnotized subject from a mere victim
can become a regular tool of crime.—_Lucifer_, October 1887.
“Merck’s Bulletin,” New York medical journal, in an editorial entitled
_Modern Witchcraft_, December, 1892, relates some astonishing
experiments recently made at the _Hôpital de la Charité_, Paris, in
which the power to “exteriorize sensibility” has been discovered,
reproducible at will; suggestion through means of simulated pinching
producing suffering; photographs sensitive to their originals even
having been produced. Thus modern science stamps with truthfulness the
power asserted as pertaining to black magicians, of causing suffering
or death through means of a waxen image of a person. “_The Accursed
Sciences_,” although brought to the bar of modern investigating
knowledge, seem not yet to have yielded the secrets of the law under
which they are rendered possible.
[50] In 1609 six hundred sorcerers were convicted in the Province of
Bordeaux, France, most of whom were burned.—_Dr. Priestly._ Within the
last year fourteen women have been tried in France for sorcery.
[51] The supreme end of magic is to conjure the spirits. The
highest and most inscrutable of all the powers dwells in the divine
and mysterious name, “The Supreme Name,” with which Hea alone is
acquainted. Before this name everything bows in heaven and earth, and
in hades, and it alone can conquer the Maskim and stop their ravages.
The great name remained the secret of Hea; if any man succeeded in
divining it, that alone would invest him with a power superior to the
gods.—_Chaldean Magic and Sorcery._
[52] Venetians concluded not unreasonably that the latter ran no more
risk from the taint of witchcraft attached to their inheritance than
did the clergy or the church. Where profits were all spiritual their
ardor soon cooled. Thus it happened as the inevitable result of the
people’s attitude in religious matters, that while in Venice there
were representatives of the vast sisterhood, which extended from the
Blockula of Sweden to the walnut tree of Benevenuto, sorcery there
never became the terrible scourge that it was in other lands where its
victims at times threatened to outnumber those of the Black Death.—_The
Witches of Venice._
[53] One of the most powerful features of the belief in witchcraft was
the power that greed had in producing belief and causing persecution.
The church had grown rich from such trials, and the state was now to
take its turn. By the public offering of a reward for the finding of
witches, their numbers greatly increased.
[54] The most exceptional conduct, the purest morals in constant
practice of every day life, are not sufficient security against the
suspicion of errors like these—_Montesquieu._
[55] For a number of years her celebrated son struggled amid his
scientific studies for the preservation of her life.
[56] Michelet.—_La Sorcerie_ 151. See _Papers on the Bastile_.
[57] In its earliest phase the Black Mass seemed to betoken the
redemption of Eve, so long accused by Christianity. The woman filled
every place in the Sabbath. Following its celebration was the denial
of Jesus, by whose authority the priests and barons robbed the serf
of human hope—the paying of homage to the new master—the feudal kiss.
To the closing ceremonies, “The Feast of Peace,” no man was admitted
unaccompanied by a woman.—_La Sorcerie._
[58] “This word at different times clearly meant quite different
things. In the 14th century, under the Avignon popes, during the great
schism when the church with two heads seems no longer a church, the
Sabbath took the horrible form of the Black Mass.”
[59] This important part of the woman being her own altar, is known to
us by the trial of La Voisin, which M. Revanna _Sen._ published with
other _Papers of the Bastile_.—_Ibid._
[60] That women have been more addicted to this devilish art than man,
is manifest by the approbation of many grave authority. Diodorus, in
his fifth book, speaks of Hecate. Heywood.—_History of Women_, London,
1624. St. Augustine, in his _City of God_, declared that women are
more prone to these unlawful acts, for so we read of Medea, Cyrce and
others. Suidas, speaking of witches, cites an old proverb, declaring
witchcraft peculiar to woman and not to man. Quintillian, referring to
this statement, says: Theft is more common with man, but witchcraft
with woman.
[61] Idiots, the lame, the blind and the dumb, are men in whom devils
have established themselves, and all the physicians who heal these
infirmities as though they preceded from natural causes are ignorant
blockheads, who know nothing about the power of demons.—_Tishreden_, p.
202.
[62] See _Reeves_ and _Hume_.
[63] _The Statute of Labourers_ (5 Eliz. C. 4) enacted that unmarried
women between twelve and forty years old may be appointed by two
justices to serve by the year, week, or day, for such wages and in such
reasonable sort and manner as they shall think meet.—_Reeves_ 3, 591-8.
[64] Seen by _Dr. Gray_.
[65] James believing in their (witches) influence, and Bacon partly
sharing in the belief. Macbeth appeared in this year mixed up
with Bacon’s inquiries into witchcraft. Ignatius Donnelly.—_The
Cryptogram._ From the accession of James I., witchcraft became the
master superstition of the age. The woman accused of witchcraft was
practically beyond the pale of the law; the mere fact of accusation was
equal to condemnation.
[66] _Laws and Customs of Scotland_, 2; 56.
[67] _The Seeress of Prevorst._