Jesus Christ,[615] nor the son of the widow of Nain,[616] nor that of
the woman of Shunam, brought to life by Elisha,[617] nor that
Israelite who came to life by simply touching the body of the same
prophet Elisha,[618] after their resurrection revealed anything to
mankind of the state of souls in the other world.
But we see in the Gospel[619] that the bad rich man, having begged of
Abraham to permit him to send some one to this world to warn his
brethren to lead a better life, and take care not to fall into the
unhappy condition in which he found himself, was answered, "They have
the law and the prophets, they can listen to them and follow their
instructions." And as the rich man persisted, saying--"If some one
went to them from the other world, they would be more impressed,"
Abraham replied, "If they will not hear Moses and the prophets,
neither will they attend the more though one should go to them from
the dead." The dead man resuscitated by St. Stanislaus replied in the
same manner to those who asked him to give them news of the other
world--"You have the law, the prophets, and the Gospel--hear them!"
The deceased Pagans who have returned to life, and some Christians who
have likewise returned to the world by a kind of resurrection, and who
have seen what passed beyond the bounds of this world, have not kept
silence on the subject. They have related at length what they saw and
heard on leaving their bodies.
We have already touched upon the story of a man named Eros, of the
country of Pamphilia,[620] who, having been wounded in battle, was
found ten days after amongst the dead. They carried him senseless and
motionless into the house. Two days afterwards, when they were about
to place him on the funeral pile to burn his body, he revived, began
to speak, and to relate in what manner people were lodged after their
death, and how the good were rewarded and the wicked punished and
tormented.
He said that his soul, being separated from his body, went with a
large company to a very agreeable place, where they saw as it were two
great openings, which gave entrance to those who came from earth, and
two others to go to heaven. He saw at this same place judges who
examined those arrived from this world, and sent up to the right those
who had lived well, and sent down to the left those who had been
guilty of crimes. Each of them bore upon his back a label on which was
written what he had done well or ill, the reason of his condemnation
or his absolution.
When it came to the turn of Eros, the judges told him that he must
return to earth, to announce to men what passed in the other world,
and that he must well observe everything, in order to be able to
render a faithful account to the living. Thus he witnessed the
miserable state of the wicked, which was to last a thousand years, and
the delights enjoyed by the just; that both the good and the bad
received the reward or the punishment of their good or bad deeds, ten
times greater than the measure of their crimes or of all their
virtues.
He remarked amongst other things, that the judges inquired where was a
certain man named Andaeus, celebrated in all Pamphylia for his crimes
and tyranny. They were answered that he was not yet come, and that he
would not be there; in fact, having presented himself with much
trouble, and by making great efforts, at the grand opening before
mentioned, he was repulsed and sent back to go below with other
scoundrels like himself, whom they tortured in a thousand different
ways, and who were always violently repulsed, whenever they tried to
reascend.
He saw, moreover, the three Fates, daughters of Necessity or Destiny.
These are, Lachesis, Clotho, and Atropos. Lachesis announced the past,
Clotho the present, and Atropos the future. The souls were obliged to
appear before these three goddesses. Lachesis cast the lots upwards,
and every soul laid hold of the one which it could reach; which,
however, did not prevent them still from sometimes missing the kind of
life which was most conformable to justice and reason.
Eros added that he had remarked some of the souls who sought to enter
into animals; for instance, Orpheus, from hatred to the female sex,
who had killed him (by tearing him to pieces), entered into a swan,
and Thamaris into a nightingale. Ajax, the son of Telamon, chose the
body of a lion, from detestation of the injustice of the Greeks, who
had refused to let him have the arms of Hector, which he asserted were
his due. Agamemnon, grieved at the crosses he had endured in this
life, chose the form of the eagle. Atalanta chose the life of the
athletics, delighted with the honors heaped upon them. Thersites, the
ugliest of mortals, chose the form of an ape. Ulysses, weary of the
miseries he had suffered upon earth, asked to live quietly as a
private man. He had some trouble to find a lot for that kind of life;
but he found it at last thrown down on the ground and neglected, and
he joyfully snatched it up.
Eros affirmed also that the souls of some animals entered into the
bodies of men; and by the contrary rule, the souls of the wicked took
possession of savage and cruel beasts, and the souls of just men of
those animals which are gentle, tame, and domestic.
After these various metempsychoses, Lachesis gave to each his
guardian or defender, who guided and guarded him during the course of
his life. Eros was then led to the river of oblivion (Lethe), which
takes away all memory of the past, but he was prevented from drinking
of its water. Lastly, he said he could not tell how he came back to
life.
Plato, after having related this fable, as he terms it, or this
apologue, concludes from it that the soul is immortal, and that to
gain a blessed life we must live uprightly, which will lead us to
heaven, where we shall enjoy that beatitude of a thousand years which
is promised us.
We see by this, 1. That a man may live a good while without eating or
breathing, or giving any sign or life. 2. That the Greeks believed in
the metempsychosis, in a state of beatitude for the just, and pains of
a thousand years duration for the wicked. 3. That destiny does not
hinder a man from doing either good or evil. 4. That he had a genius,
or an angel, who guided and protected him. They believed in judgment
after death, and that the souls of the just were received into what
they called the Elysian Fields.
Footnotes:
[615] John xi. 14.
[616] Luke vii. 11, 12.
[617] 2 Kings iv. 25.
[618] 2 Kings xiii. 21.
[619] Luke xvi. 24.
[620] Plato, lib. x. de Rep. p. 614.
CHAPTER LIV.
THE TRADITIONS OF THE PAGANS CONCERNING THE FUTURE LIFE ARE DERIVED
FROM THE HEBREWS AND EGYPTIANS.
All these traditions are clearly to be found in Homer, Virgil, and
other Greek and Latin authors; they were doubtless originally derived
from the Hebrews, or rather the Egyptians, from whom the Greeks took
their religion, which they arranged to their own taste. The Hebrews
speak of the _Rephaims_,[621] of the impious giants "who groan under
the waters." Solomon says[622] that the wicked shall go down to the
abyss, or hell, with the Rephaims. Isaiah, describing the arrival of
the King of Babylon in hell, says[623] that "the giants have raised
themselves up to meet him with honor, and have said unto him, thou has
been pierced with wounds even as we are; thy pride has been
precipitated into hell. Thy bed shall be of rottenness, and thy
covering of worms." Ezekiel describes[624] in the same manner the
descent of the King of Assyria into hell--"In the day that Ahasuerus
went down into hell, I commanded a general mourning; for him I closed
up the abyss, and arrested the course of the waters. You are at last
brought down to the bottom of the earth with the trees of Eden; you
will rest there with all those who have been killed by the sword;
there is Pharaoh with all his host," &c. In the Gospel,[625] there is
a great gulf between the bosom of Abraham and the abode of the bad
rich man, and of those who resemble him.
The Egyptians called _Amenthes_, that is to say, "he who receives and
gives," what the Greeks named Hades, or hell, or the kingdom of Hades,
or Pluto. They believed that Amenthes received the souls of men when
they died, and restored them to them when they returned to the world;
that when a man died, his soul passed into the body of some other
animal by metempsychosis; first of all into a terrestrial animal, then
into one that was aquatic, afterwards into the body of a bird, and
lastly, after having animated all sorts of animals, he returned at the
end of three thousand years to the body of a man.
It is from the Egyptians that Orpheus, Homer, and the other Greeks
derived the idea of the immortality of the soul, as well as the cave
of the Nymphs described by Homer, who says there are two gates, the
one to the north, through which the soul enters the cavern, and the
other to the south, by which they leave the nymphic abode.
A certain Thespisius, a native of Soloe in Cilicia, well known to
Plutarch,[626] having passed a great part of his life in debauchery,
and ruined himself entirely, in order to gain a livelihood lent
himself to everything that was bad, and contrived to amass money.
Having sent to consult the oracle of Amphilochus, he received for
answer, that his affairs would go on better after his death. A short
time after, he fell from the top of his house, broke his neck, and
died. Three days after, when they were about to perform the funeral
obsequies, he came to life again, and changed his way of life so
greatly that there was not in Cilicia a worthier or more pious man
than himself.
As they asked him the reason of such a change, he said that at the
moment of his fall he felt the same as a pilot who is thrown back from
the top of the helm into the sea; after which, his soul was sensible
of being raised as high as the stars, of which he admired the immense
size and admirable lustre; that the souls once out of the body rise
into the air, and are enclosed in a kind of globe, or inflamed vortex,
whence having escaped, some rise on high with incredible rapidity,
while others whirl about the air, and are thrown in divers directions,
sometimes up and sometimes down.
The greater part appeared to him very much perplexed, and uttered
groans and frightful wailings; others, but in a less number, rose and
rejoiced with their fellows. At last he learnt that Adrastia, the
daughter of Jupiter and Necessity, left nothing unpunished, and that
she treated every one according to their merit. He then details all he
saw at full length, and relates the various punishments with which the
bad are tormented in the next world.
He adds that a man of his acquaintance said to him, "You are not dead,
but by God's permission your soul is come into this place, and has
left your body with all its faculties." At last he was sent back into
his body as through a channel, and urged on by an impetuous breeze.
We may make two reflections on this recital; the first on this soul,
which quits its body for three days and then comes back to reanimate
it; the second, on the certainty of the oracle, which promised
Thespisius a happier life when he should be dead.
In the Sicilian war[627] between Caesar and Pompey, Gabienus, commander
of Caesar's fleet, having been taken, was beheaded by order of Pompey.
He remained all day on the sea-shore, his head only held on to his
body by a fillet. Towards evening he begged that Pompey or some of his
people might come to him, because he came from the shades, and he had
things of consequence to impart to him. Pompey sent to him several of
his friends, to whom Gabienus declared that the gods of the infernal
regions favored the cause and the party of Pompey, and that he would
succeed according to his wishes; that he was ordered to announce this,
"and as a proof of the truth of what I say, I must die directly,"
which happened. But we do not see that Pompey's party succeeded; we
know, on the contrary, that it fell, and Caesar was victorious. But the
God of the infernal regions, that is to say, the devil, found it very
good for him, since it sent him so many unhappy victims of revenge and
ambition.[628]
Footnotes:
[621] Job xxvi. 5.
[622] Prov. ix. 18.
[623] Isa. xix. 9, _et seq._
[624] Ezek. xxxi. 15.
[625] Luke xvi. 26.
[626] Plutarch, de his qui misero a Numine puniuntur.
[627] Plin. Hist. Natur. lib. vii. c. 52.
[628] This story is related before, and is here related on account of
the bearing it has on the subject of this chapter.
CHAPTER LV.
INSTANCES OF CHRISTIANS WHO HAVE BEEN RESUSCITATED AND SENT BACK TO
THE WORLD--VISION OF VETINUS, A MONK OF AUGIA.
We read in an old work, written in the time of St. Augustine,[629]
that a man having been crushed by a wall which fell upon him, his wife
ran to the church to invoke St. Stephen whilst they were preparing to
bury the man who was supposed to be dead. Suddenly they saw him open
his eyes, and move his body; and after a time he sat up, and related
that his soul, having quitted his body, had met a crowd of other souls
of dead persons, some of whom he knew, and others he did not; that a
young man, in a deacon's habit, having entered the room where he was,
put aside all those souls, and said to them three times, "Return what
you have received." He understood at last that he meant the creed,
which he recited instantly; and also the Lord's Prayer; then the
deacon (St. Stephen) made the sign of the cross upon his heart, and
told him to rise in perfect health. A young man,[630] a catechumen,
who had been dead for three days, and was brought back to life by the
prayers of St. Martin, related that after his death he had been
presented before the tribunal of the Sovereign Judge, who had
condemned him, and sent him with a crowd of others into a dark place;
and then two angels, having represented to the Judge that he was a man
for whom St. Martin had interceded, the Judge commanded the angels to
send him back to earth, and restore him to St. Martin, which was done.
He was baptized, and lived a long time afterwards.
St. Salvius, Bishop of Albi,[631] having been seized with a violent
fever, was thought to be dead. They washed him, clothed him, laid him
on a bier, and passed the night in prayer by him: the next morning he
was seen to move; he appeared to awake from a deep sleep, opened his
eyes, and raising his hand towards heaven said, "Ah! Lord, why hast
thou sent me back to this gloomy abode?" He rose completely cured, but
would then reveal nothing.
Some days after, he related how two angels had carried him to heaven,
where he had seen the glory of Paradise, and had been sent back
against his will to live some time longer on earth. St. Gregory of
Tours takes God to witness that he heard this history from the mouth
of St. Salvius himself.
A monk of Augia, named Vetinus, or Guetinus, who was living in 824,
was ill, and lying upon his couch with his eyes shut; but not being
quite asleep, he saw a demon in the shape of a priest, most horribly
deformed, who, showing him some instruments of torture which he held
in his hand, threatened to make him soon feel the rigorous effects of
them. At the same time he saw a multitude of evil spirits enter his
chamber, carrying tools, as if to build him a tomb or a coffin, and
enclose him in it.
Immediately he saw appear some serious and grave-looking personages,
wearing religious habits, who chased these demons away; and then
Vetinus saw an angel, surrounded with a blaze of light, who came to
the foot of the bed, and conducted him by a path between mountains of
an extraordinary height, at the foot of which flowed a large river, in
which he beheld a multitude of the damned, who were suffering diverse
torments, according to the kind and enormity of their crimes. He saw
amongst them many of his acquaintance; amongst others, some prelates
and priests, guilty of incontinence, who were tied with their backs to
stakes, and burned by a fire lighted under them; the women, their
companions in crime, suffering the same torment opposite to them.
He beheld there also, a monk who had given himself up to avarice, and
possessed money of his own, who was to expiate his crime in a leaden
coffin till the day of judgment. He remarked there abbots and bishops,
and even the Emperor Charlemagne, who were expiating their faults by
fire, but were to be released from it after a certain time. He
remarked there also the abode of the blessed in heaven, each one in
his place, and according to his merits. The Angel of the Lord after
this revealed to him the crimes which were the most common, and the
most odious in the eyes of God. He mentioned sodomy in particular, as
the most abominable crime.
After the service for the night, the abbot came to visit the sick man,
who related this vision to him in full, and the abbot had it written
down directly. Vetinus lived two days longer, and having predicted
that he had only the third day to live, he recommended himself to the
prayers of the monks, received the holy viaticum, and died in peace,
the 31st of October, 824.
Footnotes:
[629] Lib. i. de Miracul. Sancti Stephani, cap. 4. p. 28. Lib. vii.
Oper. St. Aug. in Appendice.
[630] Sulpit. Sever. in Vita S. Martini, cap. 3.
[631] Gregor. Turon. lib. vii. c. 1.
CHAPTER LVI.
THE VISION OF BERTHOLDUS, AS RELATED BY HINCMAR, ARCHBISHOP OF RHEIMS.
The famous Hincmar,[632] Archbishop of Rheims, in a circular letter
which he wrote to the bishops, his suffragans, and the faithful of his
diocese, relates, that a man named Bertholdus, with whom he was
acquainted, having fallen ill, and received all the sacraments,
remained during four days without taking any food. On the fourth day
he was so weak that there was hardly a feeble palpitation and
respiration found in him. About midnight he called to his wife, and
told her to send quickly for his confessor.
The priest was as yet only in the court before the house, when
Bertholdus said, "Place a seat here, for the priest is coming." He
entered the room and said some prayers, to which Bertholdus uttered
the responses, and then related to him the vision he had had. "On
leaving this world," said he, "I saw forty-one bishops, amongst whom
were Ebonius, Leopardellus, Eneas, who were clothed in coarse black
garments, dirty, and singed by the flames. As for themselves, they
were sometimes burned by the flames, and at others frozen with
insupportable cold." Ebonius said to him, "Go to my clergy and my
friends, and tell them to offer for us the holy sacrifice." Bertholdus
obeyed, and returning to the place where he had seen the bishops, he
found them well clothed, shaved, bathed, and rejoicing.
A little farther on, he met King Charles,[633] who was as if eaten by
worms. This prince begged him to go and tell Hincmar to relieve his
misery. Hincmar said mass for him, and King Charles found relief.
After that he saw Bishop Jesse, of Orleans, who was over a well, and
four demons plunged him into boiling pitch, and then threw him into
icy water. They prayed for him, and he was relieved. He then saw the
Count Othaire, who was likewise in torment. Bertholdus begged the wife
of Othaire, with his vassals and friends, to pray for him, and give
alms, and he was delivered from his torments. Bertholdus after that
received the holy communion, and began to find himself better, with
the hope of living fourteen years longer, as he had been promised by
his guide, who had shown him all that we have just related.
Footnotes:
[632] Hincmar, lib. ii. p. 805.
[633] Apparently Charles the Bald, who died in 875.
CHAPTER LVII.
THE VISION OF SAINT FURSIUS.
The Life of St. Fursius,[634] written a short time after his death,
which happened about the year 653, reports several visions seen by
this holy man. Being grievously ill, and unable to stir, he saw
himself in the midst of the darkness raised up, as it were, by the
hands of three angels, who carried him out of the world, then brought
him back to it, and made his soul re-enter his body, to complete the
destination assigned him by God. Then he found himself in the midst of
several people, who wept for him as if he were dead, and told him how,
the day before, he had fallen down in a swoon, so that they believed
him to be dead. He could have wished to have some intelligent persons
about him to relate to them what he had seen; but having no one near
him but rustics, he asked for and received the communion of the body
and blood of the Saviour, and continued three days longer awake.
The following Tuesday, he fell into a similar swoon, in the middle of
the night; his feet became cold, and raising his hands to pray, he
received death with joy. Then he saw the same three angels descend who
had already guided him. They raised him as the first time, but instead
of the agreeable and melodious songs which he had then heard, he could
now hear only the frightful howlings of the demons, who began to fight
against him, and shoot inflamed darts at him. The Angel of the Lord
received them on his buckler, and extinguished them. The devil
reproached Fursius with some bad thoughts, and some human weaknesses,
but the angels defended him, saying, "If he has not committed any
capital sins, he shall not perish."
As the devil could not reproach him with anything that was worthy of
eternal death, he saw two saints from his own country--St. Bean and
St. Medan, who comforted him and announced to him the evils with which
God would punish mankind, principally because of the sins of the
doctors or learned men of the church, and the princes who governed the
people;--the doctors for neglecting to declare the word of God, and
the princes for the bad examples they gave their people. After which,
they sent him back into his body again. He returned into it with
repugnance, and began to relate all that he had seen; they poured
spring water upon his body, and he felt a great warmth between his
shoulders. After this, he began to preach throughout Hibernia; and the
Venerable Bede[635] says that there was in his monastery an aged monk
who said that he had learned from a grave personage well worthy of
belief, that he had heard these visions described by St. Fursius
himself. This saint had not the least doubt that his soul was really
separated from his body, when he was carried away in his trance.
Footnotes:
[634] Vita Sti. Fursci, apud Bolland. 16 Januarii, pp. 37, 38. Item,
pp. 47, 48. Saecul. xi. Bened. p. 299.
[635] Bede, lib. iii. Hist. c. 19.
CHAPTER LVIII.
VISION OF A PROTESTANT OF YORK, AND OTHERS.
Here is another instance, which happened in 1698 to one of the
so-called reformed religion.[636] A minister of the county of York, at
a place called Hipley, and whose name was Henry Vatz (Watts), being
struck with apoplexy the 15th of August, was on the 17th placed in a
coffin to be buried. But as they were about to put him in the grave,
he uttered a loud cry, which frightened all the persons who had
attended him to the grave; they took him quickly out of the coffin,
and as soon as he had come to himself, he related several surprising
things which he said had been revealed to him during his trance, which
had lasted eight-and-forty hours. The 24th of the same month, he
preached a very moving discourse to those who had accompanied him the
day they were carrying him to the tomb.
People may, if they please, treat all that we have related as dreams
and tales, but it cannot be denied that we recognize in these
resurrections, and in these narrations of men who have come to life
again after their real or seeming death, the belief of the church
concerning hell, paradise, purgatory, the efficacy of prayers for the
dead, and the apparitions of angels and demons who torment the damned,
and of the souls who have yet something to expiate in the other world.
We see also, that which has a visible connection with the matter we
are treating upon--persons really dead, and others regarded as such,
who return to life in health and live a long time afterwards. Lastly,
we may observe therein opinions on the state of souls after this life,
which are nearly the same as among the Hebrews, Egyptians, Greeks,
Romans, barbarous nations, and Christians. If the Hungarian ghosts do
not speak of what they have seen in the other world, it is either that
they are not really dead, or more likely that all which is related of
these _revenans_ is fabulous and chimerical. I will add some more
instances which will serve to confirm the belief of the primitive
church on the subject of apparitions.
St. Perpetua, who suffered martyrdom in Africa in 202 or 203, being in
prison for the faith, saw a brother named Dinocrates, who had died at
the age of seven years of a cancer in the cheek; she saw him as if in
a very large dungeon, so that they could not approach each other. He
seemed to be placed in a reservoir of water, the sides of which were
higher than himself, so that he could not reach the water, for which
he appeared to thirst very much. Perpetua was much moved at this, and
prayed to God with tears and groans for his relief. Some days after,
she saw in spirit the same Dinocrates, well clothed, washed, and
refreshed, and the water of the reservoir in which he was, only came
up to his middle, and on the edge a cup, from which he drank, without
the water diminishing, and the skin of the cancer in his cheek well
healed, so that nothing now remained of the cancer but the scar. By
these things she understood that Dinocrates was no longer in pain.
Dinocrates was there apparently[637] to expiate some faults which he
had committed since his baptism, for Perpetua says a little before
this that only her father had remained in infidelity.
The same St. Perpetua, being in prison some days before she suffered
martyrdom[638] had a vision of the deacon Pomponius, who had suffered
martyrdom some days before, and who said to her, "Come, we are waiting
for you." He led her through a rugged and winding path into the arena
of the amphitheatre, where she had to combat with a very ugly
Egyptian, accompanied by some other men like him. Perpetua found
herself changed into a man, and began to fight naked, assisted by some
well-made youths who came to her service and assistance.
Then she beheld a man of extraordinary size, who cried aloud, "If the
Egyptian gains the victory over her, he will kill her with his sword;
but if she conquers, she shall have this branch ornamented with golden
apples for her reward." Perpetua began the combat, and having
overthrown the Egyptian, trampled his head under her feet. The people
shouted victory, and Perpetua approaching him who held the branch
above mentioned, he put it in her hands, and said to her, "Peace be
with you." Then she awoke, and understood that she would have to
combat, not against wild beasts, but against the devil.
Saturus, one of the companions of the martyrdom of St. Perpetua, had
also a vision, which he relates thus: "We had suffered martyrdom, and
were disengaged from this mortal body. Four angels carried us towards
the East without touching us. We arrived at a place shining with
intense lustre; Perpetua was at my side, and I said unto her, 'Behold
what the Lord promised us.'
"We entered a large garden full of trees and flowers; the four angels
who had borne us thither placed us in the hands of other angels, who
conducted us by a wide road to a place where we found Jocondus,
Saturninus, and Artazes, who had suffered with us, and invited us to
come and salute the Lord. We followed them, and beheld in the midst of
this place the Almighty, crowned with dazzling light, and we heard
repeated incessantly by those around him, Holy! holy! holy! They
raised us towards him, and we stopped before his throne. We gave him
the kiss of peace, and he stroked our faces with his hand.
"We came out, and we saw before the door the bishop Optatus and the
priest Aspasius, who threw themselves at our feet. We raised and
embraced them. We recognized in this place several of our brethren and
some martyrs." Such was the vision of Saturus.
There are visions of all sorts; of holy martyrs, and of holy angels.
It is related of St. Exuperus, bishop of Thoulouse,[639] that having
conceived the design of transporting the relics of St. Saturnus, a
former bishop of that church, to place them in a new church built in
his honor, he could with difficulty resolve to take this holy body
from the tomb, fearing to displease the saint, or to diminish the
honor which was due to him. But while in this doubt, he had a vision
which gave him to understand that this translation would neither
lessen the respect which was due to the ashes of the martyr, nor be
prejudicial to his honor; but that on the contrary it would contribute
to the salvation of the faithful, and to the greater glorification of
God.
Some days before[640] St. Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, suffered
martyrdom, in 258, he had a vision, not being as yet quite asleep, in
which a young man whose height was extraordinary, seemed to lead him
to the Praetorium before the Proconsul, who was seated on his tribunal.
This magistrate, having caught sight of Cyprian, began to write his
sentence before he had interrogated him as was usual. Cyprian knew not
what the sentence condemned him to; but the young man above mentioned,
and who was behind the judge, made a sign by opening his hand and
spreading in form of a sword, that he was condemned to have his head
cut off.
Cyprian easily understood what was meant by this sign, and having
earnestly requested to be allowed a day's delay to put his affairs in
order, the judge, having granted his request, again wrote upon his
tablets, and the young man by a sign of his hand let him know that the
delay was granted. These predictions were exactly fulfilled, and we
see many similar ones in the works of St. Cyprian.
St. Fructueux, Bishop of Tarragona,[641] who suffered martyrdom in
259, was seen after his death ascending to heaven with the deacons who
had suffered with him; they appeared as if they were still attached to
the stakes near which they had been burnt. They were seen by two
Christians, who showed them to the wife and daughter of Emilian, who
had condemned them. The saint appeared to Emilian himself and to the
Christians, who had taken away their ashes, and desired that they
might be all collected in one spot. We see similar apparitions[642] in
the acts of St. James, of St. Marienus, martyrs, and some others who
suffered in Numidia in 259. We may observe the like[643] in the acts
of St. Montanus, St. Lucius, and other African martyrs in 259 or 260,
and in those of St. Vincent, a martyr in Spain, in 304, and in the
life of St. Theodore, martyr, in 306, of whose sufferings St. Gregory
of Nicea has written an account. Everybody knows what happened at
Sebastus, in Armenia, in the martyrdom of the famous forty martyrs, of
whom St. Basil the Great has written the eulogium. One of the forty,
overcome by the excess of cold, which was extreme, threw himself into
a hot bath that was prepared just by. Then he who guarded them having
perceived some angels who brought crowns to the thirty-nine who had
persevered in their sufferings, despoiled himself of his garments,
joined himself to the martyrs, and declared himself a Christian.
All these instances invincibly prove that, at least in the first ages
of the church, the greatest and most learned bishops, the holy
martyrs, and the generality of the faithful, were well persuaded of
the possibility and reality of apparitions.
Footnotes:
[636] Larrey, Hist. de Louis XIV. year 1698, p. 68.
[637] Aug. lib. i. de Origine Animae.
[638] Ibid. p. 97.
[639] Aug. lib. i. de Origine Animae, p. 132.
[640] Acta Martyr. Sincera, p. 212. Vita et Passio S. Cypriani, p.
268.
[641] Acta Martyr. Sincera, pp. 219, 221.
[642] Acta Martyr. Sincera, p. 226.
[643] Ibid. pp. 231-233, 237.
CHAPTER LIX.
CONCLUSIONS OF THIS DISSERTATION.
To resume, in a few words, all that we have related in this
dissertation: we have therein shown that a resurrection, properly so
called, of a person who has been dead for a considerable time, and
whose body was either corrupted, or stinking, or ready to putrefy,
like that of Pierre, who had been three years buried, and was
resuscitated by St. Stanislaus, or that of Lazarus, who had been four
days in the tomb, and already possessing a corpse-like smell--such a
resurrection can be the work of the almighty power of God alone.
That persons who have been drowned, fallen into syncope, into a
lethargy or trance, or looked upon as dead, in any manner whatever,
can be cured and brought back to life, even to their former state of
life, without any miracle, but by the power of medicine alone, or by
natural efforts, or by dint of patience; so that nature re-establishes
herself in her former state, that the heart resumes its pulsation, and
the blood circulates freely again in the arteries, and the vital and
animal spirits in the nerves.
That the oupires, or vampires, or _revenans_ of Moravia, Hungary,
Poland, &c., of which such extraordinary things are related, so
detailed, so circumstantial, invested with all the necessary
formalities to make them believed, and to prove them even judicially
before judges, and at the most exact and severe tribunals; that all
which is said of their return to life; of their apparition, and the
confusion which they cause in the towns and country places; of their
killing people by sucking their blood, or in making a sign to them to
follow them; that all those things are mere illusions, and the
consequence of a heated and prejudiced imagination. They cannot cite
any witness who is sensible, grave and unprejudiced, who can testify
that he has seen, touched, interrogated these ghosts, who can affirm
the reality of their return, and of the effects which are attributed
to them.
I shall not deny that some persons may have died of fright, imagining
that their near relatives called them to the tomb; that others have
thought they heard some one rap at their doors, worry them, disturb
them, in a word, occasion them mortal maladies; and that these persons
judicially interrogated, have replied that they had seen and heard
what their panic-struck imagination had represented to them. But I
require unprejudiced witnesses, free from terror and disinterested,
quite calm, who can affirm upon serious reflection, that they have
seen, heard, and interrogated these vampires, and who have been the
witnesses of their operations; and I am persuaded that no such witness
will be found.
I have by me a letter, which has been sent me from Warsaw, the 3d of
February, 1745, by M. Slivisk, visitor of the province of priests of
the mission of Poland. He sends me word, that having studied with
great care this matter, and having proposed to compose on this subject
a theological and physical dissertation, he had collected some memoirs
with that view; but that the occupations of visitor and superior in
the house of his congregation of Warsaw, had not allowed of his
putting his project in execution; that he has since sought in vain for
these memoirs or notes, which have probably remained in the hands of
some of those to whom he had communicated them; that amongst these
notes were two resolutions of the Sorbonne, which both forbade cutting
off the head and maiming the body of any of these pretended oupires or
vampires. He adds, that these decisions may be found in the registers
of the Sorbonne, from the year 1700 to 1710. I shall report by and
by, a decision of the Sorbonne on this subject, dated in the year
1691.
He says, moreover, that in Poland they are so persuaded of the
existence of these oupires, that any one who thought otherwise would
be regarded almost as a heretic. There are several facts concerning
this matter, which are looked upon as incontestable, and many persons
are named as witnesses of them. "I gave myself the trouble," says he,
"to go to the fountain-head, and examine those who are cited as ocular
witnesses." He found that no one dared to affirm that they had really
seen the circumstances in question, and that it was all merely
reveries and fancies, caused by fear and unfounded discourse. So
writes to me this wise and judicious priest.
I have also received since, another letter from Vienna in Austria,
written the 3d of August, 1746, by a Lorraine baron,[644] who has
always followed his prince. He tells me, that in 1742, his imperial
majesty, then his royal highness of Lorraine, had several verbal acts
drawn up concerning these cases, which happened in Moravia. I have
them by me still; I have read them over and over again; and to be
frank, I have not found in them the shadow of truth, nor even of
probability, in what is advanced. They are, nevertheless, documents
which in that country are looked upon as true as the Gospel.
Footnotes:
[644] M. le Baron Toussaint.
CHAPTER LX.
THE MORAL IMPOSSIBILITY OF THE REVENANS COMING OUT OF THEIR GRAVES.
I have already proposed the objection formed upon the impossibility of
these vampires coming out of their graves, and returning to them
again, without its appearing that they have disturbed the earth,
either in coming out or going in again. No one has ever replied to
this difficulty, and never will. To say that the demon subtilizes and
spiritualizes the bodies of vampires, is a thing asserted without
proof or likelihood.
The fluidity of the blood, the ruddiness, the suppleness of these
vampires, ought not to surprise any one, any more than the growth of
the nails and hair, and their bodies remaining undecayed. We see every
day, bodies which remain uncorrupted, and retain a ruddy color after
death. This ought not to appear strange in those who die without
malady and a sudden death; or of certain maladies, known to our
physicians, which do not deprive the blood of its fluidity, or the
limbs of their suppleness.
With regard to the growth of the hair and nails in bodies which are
not yet decayed, the thing is quite natural. There remains in those
bodies a certain slow and imperceptible circulation of the humors,
which causes this growth of the nails and hair, in the same way that
we every day see common bulbs grow and shoot, although without any
nourishment derived from the earth.
The same may be said of flowers, and in general of all that depends on
vegetation in animals and plants.
The belief of the common people of Greece in the return to earth of
the vroucolacas, is not much better founded than that of vampires and
ghosts. It is only the ignorance, the prejudice, the terror of the
Greeks, which have given rise to this vain and ridiculous belief, and
which they keep up even to this very day. The narrative which we have
reported after M. Tournefort, an ocular witness and a good
philosopher, may suffice to undeceive those who would maintain the
contrary.
The incorruption of the bodies of those who died in a state of
excommunication, has still less foundation than the return of the
vampires, and the vexations of the living caused by the vroucolacas;
antiquity has had no similar belief. The schismatic Greeks, and the
heretics separated from the Church of Rome, who certainly died
excommunicated, ought, upon this principle, to remain uncorrupted;
which is contrary to experience, and repugnant to good sense. And if
the Greeks pretend to be the true Church, all the Roman Catholics, who
have a separate communion from them, ought then also to remain
undecayed. The instances cited by the Greeks either prove nothing, or
prove too much. Those bodies which have not decayed, were really
excommunicated, or not. If they were canonically and really
excommunicated, then the question falls to the ground. If they were
not really and canonically excommunicated, then it must be proved that
there was no other cause of incorruption--which can never be proved.
Moreover, anything so equivocal as incorruption, cannot be adduced as
a proof in so serious a matter as this. It is owned, that often the
bodies of saints are preserved from decay; that is looked upon as
certain, among the Greeks as among the Latins--therefore, we cannot
thence conclude that this same incorruption is a proof that a person
is excommunicated.
In short, this proof is universal and general, or only particular. I
mean to say, either all excommunicated persons remain undecayed, or
only a few of them. We cannot maintain that all those who die in a
state of excommunication, are incorruptible. For then all the Greeks
towards the Latins, and the Latins towards the Greeks, would be
undecayed, which is not the case. That proof then is very frivolous,
and nothing can be concluded from it. I mistrust, a great deal, all
those stories which are related to prove this pretended
incorruptibility of excommunicated persons. If well examined, many of
them would doubtless be found to be false.
CHAPTER LXI.
WHAT IS RELATED CONCERNING THE BODIES OF THE EXCOMMUNICATED LEAVING
THE CHURCH, IS SUBJECT TO VERY GREAT DIFFICULTIES.
Whatever respect I may feel for St. Gregory the Great, who relates
some instances of deceased persons who died in a state of
excommunication going out of the church before the eyes of every one
present; and whatever consideration may be due to other authors whom I
have cited, and who relate other circumstances of a similar nature,
and even still more incredible, I cannot believe that we have these
legends with all the circumstances belonging to them; and after the
reasons for doubt which I have recorded at the end of these stories, I
believe I may again say, that God, to inspire the people with still
greater fear of excommunication, and a greater regard for the
sentences and censures of the church, has willed on these occasions,
for reasons unknown to us, to show forth his power, and work a miracle
in the sight of the faithful; for how can we explain all these things
without having recourse to the miraculous? All that is said of persons
who being dead chew under ground in their graves, is so pitiful, so
puerile, that it is not worthy of being seriously refuted. Everybody
owns that too often people are buried who are not quite dead. There
are but too many instances of this in ancient and modern histories.
The thesis of M. Vinslow, and the notes added thereto by M. Bruhier,
serve to prove that there are few certain signs of real death except
the putridity of a body being at least begun. We have an infinite
number of instances of persons supposed to be dead, who have come to
life again, even after they have been put in the ground. There are I
know not how many maladies in which the patient remains for a long
time speechless, motionless, and without sensible respiration. Some
drowned persons who have been thought dead, have been revived by care
and attention.
All this is well known and may serve to explain how some vampires have
been taken out of their graves, and have spoken, cried, howled,
vomited blood, and all that because they were not yet dead. They have
been killed by beheading them, piercing their heart, and burning them;
in all which people were very wrong, for the pretext on which they
acted, of their pretended reappearance to disturb the living, causing
their death, and maltreating them, is not a sufficient reason for
treating them thus. Besides, their pretended return has never been
proved or attested in such a way as to authorize any one to show such
inhumanity, nor to dishonor and put rigorously to death on vague,
frivolous, unproved accusations, persons who were certainly innocent
of the thing laid to their charge.
For nothing is more ill-founded than what is said of the apparitions,
vexations, and confusion caused by the pretended vampires and the
vroucolacas. I am not surprised that the Sorbonne should have
condemned the bloody and violent executions which are exercised on
these kinds of dead bodies. But it is astonishing that the secular
powers and the magistrates do not employ their authority and the
severity of the laws to repress them.
The magic devotions, the fascinations, the evocations of which we have
spoken, are works of darkness, operations of Satan, if they have any
reality, which I can with difficulty believe, especially in regard to
magical devotions, and the evocations of the manes or souls of dead
persons; for, as to fascinations of the sight, or illusions of the
senses, it is foolish not to admit some of these, as when we think we
see what is not, or do not behold what is present before our eyes; or
when we think we hear a sound which in reality does not strike our
ears, or the contrary. But to say that the demon can cause a person's
death, because they have made a wax image of him, or given his name
with some superstitious ceremonies, and have devoted him or her, so
that the persons feel themselves dying as their image melts away, is
ascribing to the demon too much power, and to magic too much might.
God can, when he wills it, loosen the reign of the enemy of mankind,
and permit him to do us the harm which he and his agents may seek to
do us; but it would be ridiculous to believe that the Sovereign Master
of nature can be determined by magical incantations to allow the demon
to hurt us; or to imagine that the magician has the power to excite
the demon against us, independently of God.
The instance of that peasant who gave his child to the devil, and
whose life the devil first took away and then restored, is one of
those extraordinary and almost incredible circumstances which are
sometimes to be met with in history, and which neither theology nor
philosophy knows how to explain. Was it a demon who animated the body
of the boy, or did his soul re-enter his body by the permission of
God? By what authority did the demon take away this boy's life, and
then restore it to him? God may have permitted it to punish the
impiety of the wretched father, who had given himself to the devil to
satisfy a shameful and criminal passion. And again, how could he
satisfy it with a demon, who appeared to him in the form of a girl he
loved? In all that I see only darkness and difficulties, which I leave
to be resolved by those who are more learned or bolder than myself.
CHAPTER LXII.
REMARKS ON THE DISSERTATION CONCERNING THE SPIRIT WHICH REAPPEARED AT
ST. MAUR DES FOSSES.
The following Dissertation on the apparition which happened at St.
Maur, near Paris, in 1706, was entirely unknown to me. A friend who
took some part in my work on apparitions, had asked me by letter if I
should have any objection to its being printed at the end of my work.
I readily consented, on his testifying that it was from a worthy hand,
and deserved to be saved from the oblivion into which it was fallen. I
have since found that it was printed in the fourth volume of the
Treatise on Superstitions, by the Reverend Father le Brun, of the
Oratoire.
After the impression, a learned monk[645] wrote to me from Amiens, in
Picardy, that he had remarked in this dissertation five or six
propositions which appeared to him to be false.
1st. That the author says, all the holy doctors agree that no means of
deceiving us is left to the demons except suggestion, which has been
left them by God to try our virtue.
2d. In respect to all those prodigies and spells which the common
people attribute to sorcery and intercourse with the demon, it is
proved that they can only be done by means of natural magic; this is
the opinion of the greater number of the fathers of the church.
3d. All that demons have to do with the criminal practices of those
who are commonly called sorcerers is suggestion, by which he invites
them to the abominable research of all those natural causes which can
hurt our neighbor.
4th. Although those who have desired to maintain the popular error of
the return to earth of souls from purgatory, may have endeavored to
support their opinion by different passages, taken from St. Augustine,
St. Jerome, St. Thomas, &c., it is attested that all these fathers
speak only of the return of the blessed to manifest the glory of God.
5th. Of what may we not believe the imagination capable after so
strong a proof of its power? Can it be doubted that among all the
pretended apparitions of which stories are related, the fancy alone
works for all those which do not proceed from angels and the spirits
of the blessed, and that the rest are the invention of men?
6th. After having sufficiently established the fact, that all
apparitions which cannot be attributed to angels, or the spirits of
the blessed, are produced only by one of these causes: the writer
names them--first, the power of imagination; secondly, the extreme
subtility of the senses; and thirdly, the derangement of the organs,
as in madness and high fevers.
The monk who writes to me maintains that the first proposition is
false; that the ancient fathers of the church ascribe to the demon the
greater number of those extraordinary effects produced by certain
sounds of the voice, by figures, and by phantoms; that the exorcists
in the primitive church expelled devils, even by the avowal of the
heathen; that angels and demons have often appeared to men; that no
one has spoken more strongly of apparitions, of hauntings, and the
power of the demon, than the ancient fathers; that the church has
always employed exorcism on children presented for baptism, and
against those who were haunted and possessed by the demon. Add to
which, the author of the dissertation cites not one of the fathers to
support his general proposition.[646]
The second proposition, again, is false; for if we must attribute to
natural magic all that is ascribed to sorcerers, there are then no
sorcerers, properly so called, and the church is mistaken in offering
up prayers against their power.
The third proposition is false for the same reason.
The fourth is falser still, and absolutely contrary to St. Thomas,
who, speaking of the dead in general who appear, says that this occurs
either by a miracle, or by the particular permission of God, or by the
operation of good or evil angels.[647]
The fifth proposition, again, is false, and contrary to the fathers,
to the opinion commonly received among the faithful, and to the
customs of the church. If all the apparitions which do not proceed
from the angels or the blessed, or the inventive malice of mankind,
proceed only from fancy, what becomes of all the apparitions of demons
related by the saints, and which occurred to the saints? What becomes,
in particular, of all the stories of the holy solitaries, of St.
Anthony, St. Hilarion, &c.?[648] What becomes of the prayers and
ceremonies of the church against demons, who infest, possess, and
haunt, and appear often in these disturbances, possessions, and
hauntings?
The sixth proposition is false for the same reasons, and many others
which might be added.
"These," adds the reverend father who writes to me, "are the causes of
my doubting if the third dissertation was added to the two others with
your knowledge. I suspected that the printer, of his own accord, or
persuaded by evil intentioned persons, might have added it himself,
and without your participation, although under your name. For I said
to myself, either the reverend father approves this dissertation, or
he does not approve of it. It appears that he approves of it, since he
says that it is from a clever writer, and he would wish to preserve it
from oblivion.
"Now, how can he approve a dissertation false in itself and contrary
to himself? If he approves it not, is it not too much to unite to his
work a foolish composition full of falsehoods, disguises, false and
weak arguments, opposed to the common belief, the customs, and prayers
of the church; consequently dangerous, and quite favorable to the free
and incredulous thinkers which this age is so full of? Ought he not
rather to combat this writing, and show its weakness, falsehood, and
dangerous tendency? There, my reverend father, lies all my
difficulty."
Others have sent me word that they could have wished that I had
treated the subject of apparitions in the same way as the author of
this dissertation, that is to say, simply as a philosopher, with the
aim of destroying the credence and reality, rather than with any
design of supporting the belief in apparitions which is so observable
in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, in the fathers, and in
the customs and prayers of the church. The author of whom we speak has
cited the fathers, but in a general manner, and without marking the
testimonies, and the express and formal passages. I do not know if he
thinks much of them, and if he is well versed in them, but it would
hardly appear so from his work.
The grand principle on which this third dissertation turns is, that
since the advent and the death of Jesus Christ, all the power of the
devil is limited to enticing, inspiring, and persuading to evil; but
for the rest, he is tied up like a lion or a dog in his prison. He may
bark, he may menace, but he cannot bite unless he is too nearly
approached and yielded to, as St. Augustine truly says:[649] "Mordere
omnino non potest nisi volentem."
But to pretend that Satan can do no harm, either to the health of
mankind, or to the fruits of the earth; can neither attack us by his
stratagems, his malice, and his fury against us, nor torment those
whom he pursues or possesses; that magicians and wizards can make use
of no spells and charms to cause both men and animals dreadful
maladies, and even death, is a direct attack on the faith of the
church, the Holy Scriptures, the most sacred practices, and the
opinions of not only the holy fathers and the best theologians, but
also on the laws and ordinances of princes, and the decrees of the
most respectable parliaments.
I will not here cite the instances taken from the Old Testament, the
author having limited himself to what has passed since the death and
resurrection of our Saviour; because, he says, Jesus Christ has
destroyed the kingdom of Satan, and the prince of this world is
already judged.[650]
St. Peter, St. Paul, St. John, and the Evangelists, who were well
informed of the words of the Son of God, and the sense given to them,
teach us that Satan asked to have power over the apostles of Jesus
Christ, to sift them like wheat;[651] that is to say, to try them by
persecutions and make them renounce the faith. Does not St. Paul
complain of the _angel of Satan_ who buffeted him?[652] Did those whom
he gave up to Satan for their crimes,[653] suffer nothing bodily?
Those who took the communion unworthily, and were struck with
sickness, or even with death, did they not undergo these chastisements
by the operation of the demon?[654] The apostle warns the Corinthians
not to suffer themselves to be surprised by Satan, who sometimes
transforms himself into an angel of light.[655] The same apostle,
speaking to the Thessalonians, says to them, that before the last day
antichrist will appear,[656] according to the working of Satan, with
extraordinary power, with wonders and deceitful signs. In the
Apocalypse the demon is the instrument made use of by God, to punish
mortals and make them drink of the cup of his wrath. Does not St.
Peter[657] tell us that "the devil prowls about us like a roaring
lion, always ready to devour us?" And St. Paul to the Ephesians,[658]
"that we have to fight not against men of flesh and blood, but against
principalities and powers, against the princes of this world," that is
to say, of this age of darkness, "against the spirits of malice spread
about in the air?"
The fathers of the first ages speak often of the power that the
Christians exercised against the demons, against those who called
themselves diviners, against magicians and other subalterns of the
devil; principally against those who were possessed, who were then
frequently seen, and are so still from time to time, both in the
church and out of the church. Exorcisms and other prayers of the
church have always been employed against these, and with success.
Emperors and kings have employed their authority and the rigor of the
laws against those who have devoted themselves to the service of the
demon, and used spells, charms, and other methods which the demon
employs, to entice and destroy both men and animals, or the fruits of
the country.
We might add to the remarks of the reverend Dominican father divers
other propositions drawn from the same work; for instance, when the
author says that "the angels know everything here below; for if it is
by means of specialties, which God communicates to them every day, as
St. Augustine thinks, there is no reason to believe that they do not
know all the wants of mankind, and that they cannot console and
strengthen them, render themselves visible to them by the permission
of God, without always receiving from him an express order so to do."
This proposition is rather rash: it is not certain that the angels
know everything that passes here below. Jesus Christ, in St. Matthew
xxiv. 36, says that the angels do not know the day of his coming. It
is still more doubtful that the angels can appear without an express
command from God, and that St. Augustine has so taught.
He says, a little while after--"That demons often appeared before
Jesus Christ in fantastic forms, which they assumed as the angels do,"
that is to say, in aerial bodies which they organized; "whilst at
present, and since the coming of Jesus Christ, those wonders and
spells have been so common that the people attributed them to sorcery
and commerce with the devil, whereas it is attested that they can be
operated only by natural magic, which is the knowledge of secret
effects from natural causes, and many of them by the subtilty of the
air alone. This is the opinion of the greater number of the fathers
who have spoken of them."
This proposition is false, and contrary to the doctrine and practice
of the church; and it is not true that it is the opinion of the
greater number of the fathers; he should have cited some of them.[659]
He says that "the Book of Job and the song of Hezekiah are full of
testimonies that the Holy Spirit seems to have taught us, that our
souls cannot return to earth after our death, until God has made
angels of them."
It is true that the Holy Scriptures speak of the resurrection and
return of souls into their bodies as of a thing that is impossible in
the natural course. Man cannot raise up himself from the dead, neither
can he raise up his fellow-man without an effort of the supreme might
of God. Neither can the spirits of the deceased appear to the living
without the command or permission of God. But it is false to say,
"that God makes angels of our souls, and that then they can appear to
the living."
Our souls will never become angels; but Jesus Christ tells us that
after our death our souls will be _as_ the angels of God, (Matt. xxii.
30); that is to say, spiritual, incorporeal, immortal, and exempt from
all the wants and weaknesses of this present life; but he does not say
that our souls must _become_ angels.
He affirms "that what Jesus Christ said, 'that spirits have neither
flesh nor bones,' far from leading us to believe that spirits can
return to earth, proves, on the contrary, evidently that they cannot
without a miracle render themselves visible to mankind; since it
requires absolutely a corporeal substance and organs of speech to make
ourselves heard, which does not agree with the spirits, who naturally
cannot be subject to our senses."
This is no more impossible than what he said beforehand of the
apparitions of angels, since our souls, after the death of the body,
are "like unto the angels," according to the Gospel. He acknowledges
himself, with St. Jerome against Vigilantius, that the saints who are
in heaven appear sometimes visibly to men. "Whence comes it that
animals have, as well as ourselves, the faculty of memory, but not the
reflection which accompanies it, which proceeds only from the soul,
which they have not?"
Is not memory itself the reflection of what we have seen, done, or
heard; and in animals is not memory followed by reflection,[660] since
they avenge themselves on those who hurt them, avoid that which has
incommoded them, foreseeing what might happen to themselves from it if
they fell again into the same mistake?
After having spoken of natural palingenesis, he concludes--"And thus
we see how little cause there is to attribute these appearances to the
return of souls to earth, or to demons, as do some ignorant persons."
If those who work the wonders of natural palingenesis, and admit the
natural return of phantoms in the cemeteries, and fields of battle,
which I do not think happens naturally, could show that these phantoms
speak, act, move, foretell the future, and do what is related of
returned souls or other apparitions, whether good angels or bad ones,
we might conclude that there is no reason to attribute them to souls,
angels, and demons; but, 1, they have never been able to cause the
appearance of the phantom of a dead man, by any secret of art. 2. If
it had been possible to raise his shade, they could never have
inspired it with thought or reasoning powers, as we see in the angels
and demons, who appear, reason, and act, as intelligent beings, and
gifted with the knowledge of the past, the present, and sometimes of
the future.
He denies that the souls in purgatory return to earth; for if they
could come back, "everybody would receive similar visits from their
relations and friends, since all the souls would feel disposed to do
the same. Apparently," says he, "God would grant them this permission,
and if they had this permission, every person of good sense would be
at a loss to comprehend why they should accompany all their
appearances with all the follies so circumstantially related."
We may reply, that the return of souls to earth may depend neither on
their inclination nor their will, but on the will of God, who grants
this permission to whom he pleases, when he will, and as he will.
The wicked rich man asked that Lazarus[661] might be sent to this
world to warn his brothers not to fall into the same misfortune as
himself, but he could not obtain it. There are an infinity of souls in
the same case and disposition, who cannot obtain leave to return
themselves or to send others in their place.
If certain narratives of the return of spirits to earth have been
accompanied by circumstances somewhat comic, it does not militate
against the truth of the thing; since for one recital imprudently
embellished by uncertain circumstances, there are a thousand written
sensibly and seriously, and in a manner very conformable to truth.
He maintains that all the apparitions which cannot be attributed to
angels or to blessed spirits, are produced only by one of these three
causes:--the power of imagination; the extreme subtility of the
senses; and the derangement of the organs, as in cases of madness and
in high fevers.
This proposition is rash, and has before been refuted by the Reverend
Father Richard.
The author recounts all that he has said of the spirit of St. Maur, in
causing the motion of the bed in the presence of three persons who
were wide awake, the repeated shrieks of a person whom they did not
see, of a door well-bolted, of repeated blows upon the walls, of
panes of glass struck with violence in the presence of three persons,
without their being able to see the author of all this movement;--he
reduces all this to a derangement of the imagination, the subtilty of
the air, or the vapors casually arising in the brain of an invalid.
Why did he not deny all these facts? Why did he give himself the
trouble to compose so carefully a dissertation to explain a
phenomenon, which, according to him, can boast neither truth nor
reality? For my part, I am very glad to give the public notice that I
neither adopt nor approve this anonymous dissertation, which I never
saw before it was printed; that I know nothing of the author, take no
part in it, and have no interest in defending him. If the subject of
apparitions be purely philosophical, and it can without injury to
religion be reduced to a problem, I should have taken a different
method to destroy it, and I should have suffered my reasoning and my
imagination to act more freely.
Footnotes:
[645] Letter of the Reverend Father Richard, a Dominican of Amiens, of
the 29th of July, 1746.
[646] See on this subject the letter of the Marquis Maffei, which
follows.
[647] St. Thomas, i. part 9, 89, art. 8, ad. 2.
[648] The author had foreseen this objection from the beginning of his
dissertation.
[649] Aug. Serm. de Semp. 197.
[650] John xvi. 11.
[651] Luke xxii. 31.
[652] 2 Cor. xi. 7.
[653] 1 Tim. i. 2.
[654] 1 Cor. xi. 30.
[655] 2 Cor. ii. 11, and xi. 14.
[656] 2 Thess. ii.
[657] 1 Pet. v. 8.
[658] Ephes. vi. 12.
[659] They are cited in the letter of the Marquis Maffei.
[660] The author, as we may see, is not a Cartesian, since he assigns
reflection even to animals. But if they reflect, they choose; whence
it consequently follows that they are free.
[661] Luke xiii. 14.
CHAPTER LXIII.
DISSERTATION BY AN ANONYMOUS WRITER.
_Answer to a Letter on the subject of the Apparition of St. Maur._
"You have been before me, sir, respecting the spirit of St. Maur,
which causes so much conversation at Paris; for I had resolved to send
you a short detail of that event, in order that you might impart to me
your reflections on a matter so delicate and so interesting to all
Paris. But since you have read an account of it, I cannot understand
why you have hesitated a moment to decide what you ought to think of
it. What you do me the honor to tell me, that you have suspended your
judgment of the case until I have informed you of mine, does me too
much honor for me to be persuaded of it; and I think there is more
probability in believing that it is a trick you are playing me, to see
how I shall extricate myself from such slippery ground. Nevertheless,
I cannot resist the entreaties, or rather the orders, with which your
letter is filled; and I prefer to expose myself to the pleasantry of
the free thinkers, or the reproaches of the credulous, than the anger
of those with which I am threatened by yourself.
"You ask if I believe that spirits come back, and if the circumstance
which occurred at St. Maur can be attributed to one of those
incorporeal substances?
"To answer your two questions in the same order that you propose them
to me, I must first tell you, that the ancient heathens acknowledge
various kinds of spirits, which they called _lares_, _larvae_,
_lemures_, _genii_, _manes_.
"For ourselves, without pausing at the folly of our cabalistic
philosophers, who fancy spirits in every element, calling those sylphs
which they pretend to inhabit the air; _gnomes_, those which they
feign to be under the earth; _ondines_, those which dwell in the
water; and _salamanders_, those of fire; we acknowledge but three
sorts of created spirits, namely, angels, demons, and the souls which
God has united to our bodies, and which are separated from them by
death.
"The Holy Scriptures speak in too many places of the apparitions of
the angels to Abraham, Jacob, Tobit, and several other holy patriarchs
and prophets, for us to doubt of it. Besides, as their name signifies
their ministry, being created by God to be his messengers, and to
execute his commands, it is easy to believe that they have often
appeared visibly to men, to announce to them the will of the Almighty.
Almost all the theologians agree that the angels appear in the aerial
bodies with which they clothe themselves.
"To make you understand in what manner they take and invest themselves
with these bodies, in order to render themselves visible to men, and
to make themselves heard by them, we must first of all explain what is
vision, which is only the bringing of the _species_ within the compass
of the organ of sight. This "_species_" is the ray of light broken and
modified upon a body, on which, forming different angles, this light
is converted into colors. For an angle of a certain kind makes red,
another green, blue or yellow, and so on of all the colors, as we
perceive in the prism, on which the reflected rays of the sun forms
the different colors of the rainbow; the _species_ visible is then
nothing else than the ray of light which returns from the object on
which it breaks to the eyes.
"Now, light falls only on three kinds of objects or bodies, of which
some are diaphanous, others opake, and the others participate in these
two qualities, being partly diaphanous and partly opake. When the
light falls on a diaphanous body which is full of an infinity of
little pores, as the air, it passes through without causing any
reflection. When the light falls on a body entirely opake, as a
flower, for instance, not being able to penetrate it, its ray is
reflected from it, and returns from the flower to the eye, to which it
carries the _species_, and renders the colors distinguishable,
according to the angles formed by reflection. If the body on which the
light falls is in part opake and in part diaphanous, like glass, it
passes through the diaphanous part, that is to say, through the pores
of the glass which it penetrates, and reflects itself on the opake
particles, that is to say, which are not porous. Thus the air is
invisible, because it is absolutely penetrated with light: the flower
sends back a color to the eye, because, being impenetrable to the
light, it obliges it to reflect itself; and the glass is visible only
because it contains some opake particles, which, according to the
diversity of angles formed upon it by the ray of light, reflect
different colors.
"That is the manner in which vision is formed, so that air being
invisible, on account of its extreme transparency, an angel could not
clothe himself with it and render himself visible, but by thickening
the air so much, that from diaphanous it became opake, and capable of
reflecting the ray of light to the eye of him who perceived him. Now,
as the angels possess knowledge and power far beyond anything we can
imagine, we need not be astonished if they can form aerial bodies,
which are rendered visible by the opacity they impart to them. In
respect to the organs necessary to these aerial bodies, to form sounds
and make themselves heard, without having any recourse to the
disposition of matter, we must attribute them entirely to a miracle.
"It is thus that angels have appeared to the holy patriarchs. It is
thus that the glorious souls that participate the angelic nature can
assume an aerial body to render themselves visible, and that even
demons, by thickening and condensing the air, can make to themselves a
body of it, so as to become visible to men, by the particular
permission of God, to accomplish the secrets of his providence, as
they are said to have appeared to St. Anthony the Hermit, and to other
saints, in order to tempt them.
"Excuse, sir, this little physical digression, with which I could not
dispense, in order to make you understand the manner in which angels,
who are purely spiritual substances, can be perceived by our fleshly
senses.
"The only point on which the holy doctors do not agree on this subject
is, to know if angels appear to men of their own accord, or whether
they can do it only by an express command from God. It seems to me
that nothing can better contribute to the decision of this difficulty,
than to determine the way in which the angels know all things here
below; for if it is by means of "_species_" which God communicates to
them every day, as St. Augustine believes, there is no reason to doubt
of their knowing all the wants of mankind, or that they can, in order
to console and strengthen them, render their presence sensible to
them, by God's permission, without receiving an express command from
him on the subject; which may be concluded from what St. Ambrose says
on the subject of the apparition of angels, who are by nature
invisible to us, and whom their will renders visible. _Hujus naturae
est non videri, voluntatis, videri._[662]
"On the subject of demons, it is certain that their power was very
great before the coming of Jesus Christ, since he calls them himself,
the powers of darkness, and the princes of this world. It cannot be
doubted that they had for a long time deceived mankind, by the wonders
which they caused to be performed by those who devoted themselves more
particularly to their service; that several oracles have been the
effect of their power and knowledge, although part of them must be
ascribed to the subtlety of men; and that they may have appeared under
fantastic forms, which they assumed in the same way as the angels,
that is to say, in aerial bodies, which they organized. The Holy
Scriptures assure us even, that they took possession of the bodies of
living persons. But Jesus Christ says too precisely, that he has
destroyed the kingdom of the demons, and delivered us from their
tyranny, for us possibly to think rationally that they still possess
that power over us which they had formerly, so far as to work
wonderful things which appeared miraculous; such as they relate of the
vestal virgin, who, to prove her virginity, carried water in a sieve;
and of her who by means of her sash alone, towed up the Tiber a boat,
which had been so completely stranded that no human power could move
it. Almost all the holy doctors agree, that the only means they now
have of deceiving us is by suggestion, which God has left in their
power to try our virtue.
"I shall not amuse myself by combating all the impositions which have
been published concerning demons, incubi, and succubi, with which some
authors have disfigured their works, any more than I shall reply to
the pretended possession of the nuns of Loudun, and of Martha
Brossier,[663] which made so much noise at Paris at the commencement
of the last century; because several learned men who have favored us
with their reflections on these adventures, have sufficiently shown
that the demons had nothing to do with them; and the last, above all,
is perfectly quashed by the report of Marescot, a celebrated
physician, who was deputed by the Faculty of Theology to examine this
girl who performed so many wonders. Here are his own words, which may
serve as a general reply to all these kind of adventures:--_A natura
multa plura ficta, a Daemone nulla._ That is to say, that the
constitution of Martha Brossier, who was apparently very melancholy
and hypochondriacal, contributed greatly to her fits of enthusiasm;
that she feigned still more, and that the devil had nothing to do with
it.
"If some of the fathers, as St. Thomas, believe that the demons
sometimes produce sensible effects, they always add, that it can be
only by the particular permission of God, for his glory and the
salvation of mankind.
"In regard to all those prodigies and those common spells, which the
people ascribe to sorcery or commerce with the demon, it is proved
that they can be performed only by natural magic, which is the
knowledge of secret effects of natural causes, and several by the
subtlety of art. It is the opinion of the greater number of the
fathers of the church who have spoken of it; and without seeking
testimony of it in Pagan authors, such as Xenophon, Athenaeus, and
Pliny, whose works are full of an infinity of wonders which are all
natural, we see in our own time the surprising effects of nature, as
those of the magnet, of steel, and mercury, which we should attribute
to sorcery as did the ancients, had we not seen sensible
demonstrations of their powers. We also see jugglers do such
extraordinary things, which seem so contrary to nature, that we should
look upon these charlatans as magicians, if we did not know by
experience, that their address alone, joined to constant practice,
makes them able to perform so many things which seem marvelous to us.
"All the share that the demons have in the criminal practices of those
who are commonly called sorcerers, is suggestion; by which means they
invite them to the abominable research of every natural cause which
can do injury to others.
"I am now, sir, at the most delicate point of your question, which is,
to know if our souls can return to earth after they are separated from
our bodies.
"As the ancient philosophers erred so strongly on the nature of the
soul--some believing that it was but a fire which animated us, and
others a subtile air, and others affirming that it was nothing else
but the proper arrangement of all the machine of the body, a doctrine
which could not be admitted any more as the cause of in men than in
beasts; we cannot therefore be surprised that they had such gross
ideas concerning their state after death.
"The error of the Greeks, which they communicated to the Romans, and
the latter to our ancestors was, that the souls whose bodies were not
solemnly interred by the ministry of the priests of religion, wandered
out of Hades without finding any repose, until their bodies had been
burned and their ashes collected. Homer makes Patroclus, who was
killed by Hector, appear to his friend Achilles in the night to ask
him for burial, without which, he is deprived, he says, of the
privilege of passing the river Acheron. There were only the souls of
those who had been drowned, whom they believed unable to return to
earth after death; for which we find a curious reason in Servius, the
interpreter of Virgil, who says, the greater number of the learned in
Virgil's time, and Virgil himself, believing that the soul was nothing
but a fire, which animated and moved the body, were persuaded that the
fire was entirely extinguished by the water--as if the material could
act upon the spiritual. Virgil explains his opinions on the subject
of souls very clearly in these verses:--
'Igneus est ollis vigor, et celestis origo.'
And a little after,
'totos infusa per artus
Mens agitat molem, et toto se corpore miscet;'
to mark the universal soul of the world, which he believed with the
greater part of the philosophers of his time.
"Again, it was a common error amongst the pagans, to believe that the
souls of those who died before they were of their proper age, which
they placed at the end of their growth, wandered about until the time
came when they ought naturally to be separated from their bodies.
Plato, more penetrating and better informed than the others, although
like them mistaken, said, that the souls of the just who had obeyed
virtue ascended to the sky; and that those who had been guilty of
impiety, retaining still the contagion of the earthly matter of the
body, wandered incessantly around the tombs, appearing like shadows
and phantoms.
"For us, whom religion teaches that our souls are spiritual substances
created by God, and united for a time to bodies, we know that there
are three different states after death.
"Those who enjoy eternal beatitude, absorbed, as the holy doctors say,
in the contemplation of the glory of God, cease not to interest
themselves in all that concerns mankind, whose miseries they have
undergone; and as they have attained the happiness of angels, all the
sacred writers ascribe to them the same privilege of possessing the
power, as aerial bodies, of rendering themselves visible to their
brethren who are still upon earth, to console them, and inform them of
the Divine will; and they relate several apparitions, which always
happened by the particular permission of God.
"The souls whose abominable crimes have plunged them into that gulf of
torment, which the Scripture terms hell, being condemned to be
detained there forever, without being able to hope for any relief,
care not to have permission to come and speak to mankind in fantastic
forms. The Scripture clearly set forth the impossibility of this
return, by the discourse which is put into the mouth of the wicked
rich man in hell, introduced speaking to Abraham; he does not ask
leave to go himself, to warn his brethren on earth to avoid the
torments which he suffers, because he knows that it is not possible;
but he implores Abraham to send thither Lazarus, who was in glory. And
to observe _en passant_ how very rare are the apparitions of the
blessed and of angels, Abraham replies to him, that it would be
useless, since those who are upon earth have the Law and the Prophets,
which they have but to follow.
"The story of the canon of Rheims, in the eleventh century, who, in
the midst of the solemn service which was being performed for the
repose of his soul, spoke aloud and said, That he was sentenced and
condemned,[664] has been refuted by so many of the learned, who have
shown that this circumstance is clearly supposititious, since it is
not found in any contemporaneous author; that I think no enlightened
person can object it against me. But even were this story as
incontestable as it is apocryphal, it would be easy for me to say in
reply, that the conversion of St. Bruno, who has won so many souls to
God, was motive enough for the Divine Providence to perform so
striking a miracle.
"It now remains for me to examine if the souls which are in purgatory,
where they expiate the rest of their crimes before they pass to the
abode of the blessed, can come and converse with men, and ask them to
pray for their relief.
"Although those who have desired to maintain this popular error, have
done their endeavors to support it by different passages from St.
Augustine, St. Jerome, and St. Thomas, it is certain that all these
fathers speak only of the return of the blessed to manifest the glory
of God; and of St. Augustine says precisely, that if it were possible
for the souls of the dead to appear to men, not a day would pass
without his receiving a visit from Monica his mother.
"Tertullian, in his Treatise on the Soul, laughs at those who in his
time believed in apparitions. St. John Chrysostom, speaking on the
subject of Lazarus, formally denies them; as well as the law
glossographer, Canon John Andreas, who calls them phantoms of a sickly
imagination, and all that is reported about spirits which people think
they hear or see, vain apparitions. The 7th chapter of Job, and the
song of King Hezekiah, reported in the 38th chapter of Isaiah, are all
full of the witnesses which the Holy Spirit seems to have desired to
give us of this truth, that our souls cannot return to earth after our
death until God has made them angels.
"But in order to establish this still better, we must reply to the
strongest objections of those who combat it. They adduce the opinion
of the Jews, which they pretend to prove by the testimony of Josephus
and the rabbis; the words of Jesus Christ to his apostles, when he
appeared to them after his resurrection; the authority of the council
of Elvira;[665] some passages from St. Jerome, in his Treatise against
Vigilantius; of decrees issued by different Parliaments, by which the
leases of several houses had been broken on account of the spirits
which haunted them daily, and tormented the lodgers or tenants; in
short an infinite number of instances, which are scattered in every
story.
"To destroy all these authorities in a few words, I say first of all,
that it cannot be concluded that the Jews believed in the return of
spirits after death, because Josephus assures us that the spirit which
the Pythoness caused to appear to Saul was the true spirit of Samuel;
for, besides that the holiness of this prophet had placed him in the
number of the blessed, there are circumstances attending this
apparition which have caused most of the holy fathers[666] to doubt
whether it really was the ghost of Samuel, believing that it might be
an illusion with which the Pythoness deceived Saul, and made him
believe that he saw that which he desired to see.
"What several rabbis relate of patriarchs, prophets, and kings whom
they saw on the mountain of Gerizim, does not prove either that the
Jews believed that the spirits of the dead could come back, since it
was only a vision proceeding from the spirit in ecstasy, which
believed it saw what it saw not truly; all those who compose this
appearance were persons of whose holiness the Jews were persuaded.
What Jesus Christ says to his apostles, that the spirits have 'neither
flesh nor bones,' far from making us believe that spirits can come
back again, proves on the contrary evidently, that they cannot without
a miracle make us sensible of their presence, since it requires
absolutely a corporeal substance and bodily organs to utter sounds;
the description does agree with souls, they being pure substances,
exempt from matter, invisibles, and therefore cannot _naturally_ be
subject to our senses.
"The Provincial Council held in Spain during the pontificate of
Sylvester I., which forbids us to light a taper by day in the
cemeteries of martyrs, adding, as a reason, that we must not disturb
the spirits of the saints, is of no consideration; because besides
that these words are liable to different interpretations, and may even
have been inserted by some copyist, as some learned men believe, they
only relate to the martyrs, of whom we cannot doubt that their spirits
are blessed.
"I make the same reply to a passage of St. Jerome, because arguing
against the heresiarch Vigilantius, who treated as illusions all the
miracles which were worked at the tombs of the martyrs; he endeavors
to prove to him that the saints who are in heaven always take part in
the miseries of mankind, and sometimes even appear to them visibly to
strengthen and console them.
"As for the decrees which have annulled the leases of several houses
on account of the inconvenience caused by ghosts to those who lodged
therein, it suffices to examine the means and the reasons upon which
they were obtained, to comprehend that either the judges were led into
error by the prejudices of their childhood, or that they were obliged
to yield to the proofs produced, often even against their own superior
knowledge, or they have been deceived by imposture, or by the
simplicity of the witnesses.
"With respect to the apparitions, with which all such stories are
filled, one of the strongest which can be objected against my
argument, and to which I think myself the more obliged to reply, is
that which is affirmed to have occurred at Paris in the last century,
and of which five hundred witnesses are cited, who have examined into
the truth of the matter with particular attention. Here is the
adventure, as related by those who wrote at the time it took
place.[667]
"The Marquis de Rambouillet, eldest brother of the Duchess of
Montauzier, and the Marquis de Precy, eldest son of the family of
Nantouillet, both of them between twenty and thirty, were intimate
friends, and went to the wars, as in France do all men of quality. As
they were conversing one day together on the subject of the other
world, after several speeches which sufficiently showed that they were
not too well persuaded of the truth of all that is said concerning it,
they promised each other that the first who died should come and bring
the news to his companion. At the end of three months the Marquis de
Rambouillet set off for Flanders, where the war was then being carried
on; and de Precy, detained by a high fever, remained at Paris. Six
weeks afterwards de Precy, at six in the morning, heard the curtains
of his bed drawn, and turning to see who it was, he perceived the
Marquis de Rambouillet in his buff vest and boots; he sprung out of
bed to embrace him to show his joy at his return, but Rambouillet,
retreating a few steps, told him that these caresses were no longer
seasonable, for he only came to keep his word with him; that he had
been killed the day before on such an occasion; that all that was said
of the other world was certainly true; that he must think of leading a
different life; and that he had no time to lose, as he would be killed
the first action he was engaged in.
"It is impossible to express the surprise of the Marquis de Precy at
this discourse; as he could not believe what he heard, he made several
efforts to embrace his friend, whom he thought desirous of deceiving
him, but he embraced only air; and Rambouillet, seeing that he was
incredulous, showed the wound he had received, which was in the side,
whence the blood still appeared to flow. After that the phantom
disappeared, and left de Precy in a state of alarm more easy to
comprehend than describe; he called at the same time his
valet-de-chambre, and awakened all the family with his cries. Several
persons ran to his room, and he related to them what he had just seen.
Every one attributed this vision to the violence of the fever, which
might have deranged his imagination; they begged him to go to bed
again, assuring him that he must have dreamed what he told them.
"The Marquis in despair, on seeing that they took him for a visionary,
related all the circumstances I have just recounted; but it was in
vain for him to protest that he had seen and heard his friend, being
wide awake; they persisted in the same idea until the arrival of the
post from Flanders, which brought the news of the death of the Marquis
de Rambouillet.
"This first circumstance being found true, and in the same manner as de
Precy had said, those to whom he had related the adventure began to
think that there might be something in it, because Rambouillet having
been killed precisely the eve of the day he had said it, it was
impossible de Precy should have known of it in a natural way. This
event having spread in Paris, they thought it was the effect of a
disturbed imagination, or a made up story; and whatever might be said
by the persons who examined the thing seriously, there remained in
people's minds a suspicion, which time alone could disperse: this
depended on what might happen to the Marquis de Precy, who was
threatened that he should be slain in the first engagement; thus every
one regarded his fate as the denouement of the piece; but he soon
confirmed everything they had doubted the truth of, for as soon as he
recovered from his illness he would go to the combat of St. Antoine,
although his father and mother, who were afraid of the prophecy, said
all they could to prevent him; he was killed there, to the great
regret of all his family.
"Supposing all these circumstances to be true, this is what I should
say to counteract the deductions that some wish to derive from them.
"It is not difficult to understand that the imagination of the Marquis
de Precy, heated by fever, and troubled by the recollection of the
promise that the Marquis de Rambouillet and himself had exchanged, may
have represented to itself the phantom of his friend, whom he knew to
be fighting, and in danger every moment of being killed. The
circumstances of the wound of the Marquis de Rambouillet, and the
prediction of the death of de Precy, which was fulfilled, appears more
serious: nevertheless, those who have experienced the power of
presentiments, the effects of which are so common every day, will
easily conceive that the Marquis de Precy, whose mind, agitated by a
burning fever, followed his friend in all the chances of war, and
expected continually to see announced to himself by the phantom of his
friend what was to happen, may have imagined that the Marquis de
Rambouillet had been killed by a musket-shot in the side, and that the
ardor which he himself felt for war might prove fatal to him in the
first action. We shall see by the words of St. Augustine, which I
shall cite by-and-by, how fully that Doctor of the Church was
persuaded of the power of imagination, to which he attributes the
knowledge of things to come. I shall again establish the authority of
presentiments by a most singular instance.
"A lady of talent, whom I knew particularly well, being at Chartres,
where she was residing, dreamt in the night that in her sleep she saw
Paradise, which she fancied to herself was a magnificent hall, around
which were in different ranks the angels and spirits of the blessed,
and God, who presided in the midst, on a shining throne. She heard
some one knock at the door of this delightful place; and St. Peter
having opened it, she saw two pretty children, one of them clothed in
a white robe, and the other quite naked. St. Peter took the first by
the hand and led him to the foot of the throne, and left the other
crying bitterly at the door. She awoke at that moment, and related her
dream to several persons, who thought it very remarkable. A letter
which she received from Paris in the afternoon informed her that one
of her daughters was brought to bed with two children, who were dead,
and only one of them had been baptized.
"Of what may we not believe the imagination capable, after so strong a
proof of its power? Can we doubt that amongst all the pretended
apparitions that are related, imagination alone produces all those
which do not proceed from angels and blessed spirits, or which are not
the effect of fraudulent contrivance?
"To explain more fully what has given rise to those phantoms, the
apparition of which has been published in all ages, without availing
myself of the ridiculous opinion of the skeptics, who doubt of
everything, and assert that our senses, however sound they may be, can
only imagine everything falsely, I shall remark that the wisest
amongst the philosophers maintain that deep melancholy, anger, frenzy,
fever, depraved or debilitated senses, whether naturally, or by
accident, can make us see and hear many things which have no
foundation.
"Aristotle says[668] that in sleep the interior senses act by the
local movement of the humors and the blood, and that this action
descends sometimes to the sensitive organs, so that on awaking, the
wisest persons think they see the images they have dreamt of.
"Plutarch, in the Life of Brutus, relates that Cassius persuaded
Brutus that a spectre which the latter declared he had seen on waking,
was an effect of his imagination; and this is the argument which he
puts in his mouth:--
"'The spirit of man being extremely active in its nature, and in
continual motion, which produces always some fantasy; above all,
melancholy persons, like you, Brutus, are more apt to form to
themselves in the imagination ideal images, which sometimes pass to
their external senses.'
"Galen, so skilled in the knowledge of all the springs of the human
body, attributes spectres to the extreme subtility of sight and
hearing.
"What I have read in Cardan seems to establish the opinion of Galen.
He says that, being in the city of Milan, it was reported that there
was an angel in the air, who appeared visibly, and having ran to the
market-place, he, with two thousand others, saw the same. As even the
most learned were in admiration at this wonder, a clever lawyer, who
came to the spot, having observed the thing attentively, sensibly made
them remark that what they saw was not an angel, but the figure of an
angel, in stone, placed on the top of the belfry of St. Gothard, which
being imprinted in a thick cloud by means of a sunbeam which fell upon
it, was reflected to the eyes of those who possessed the most piercing
vision. If this fact had not been cleared up on the spot by a man
exempt from all prejudice, it would have passed for certain that it
was a real angel, since it had been seen by the most enlightened
persons in the town to the number of two thousand.
"The celebrated du Laurent, in his treatise on Melancholy, attributes
to it the most surprising effects; of which he gives an infinite
number of instances, which seem to surpass the power of nature.
"St. Augustine, when consulted by Evodius, Bishop of Upsal, on the
subject I am treating of, answers him in these terms: 'In regard to
visions, even of those by which we learn something of the future, it
is not possible to explain how they are formed, unless we could first
of all know how everything arises which passes through our minds when
we think; for we see clearly that a number of images are excited in
our minds, which images represent to us what has struck either our
eyes or our other senses. We experience it every day and every hour.'
And a little after, he adds: 'At the moment I dictate this letter, I
see you with the eyes of my mind, without your being present, or your
knowing anything about it; and I represent to myself, through my
knowledge of your character, the impression that my words will make
on your mind, without nevertheless knowing or being able to understand
how all this passes within me.'
"I think, sir, you will require nothing more precise than these words
of St. Augustine to persuade you that we must attribute to the power
of imagination the greater number of apparitions, even of those
through which we learn things which it would seem could not be known
naturally; and you will easily excuse my undertaking to explain to you
how the imagination works all these wonders, since this holy doctor
owns that he cannot himself comprehend it, though quite convinced of
the fact.
"I can tell you only that the blood which circulates incessantly in
our arteries and veins, being purified and warmed in the heart, throws
out thin vapors, which are its most subtile parts, and are called
animal spirits; which, being carried into the cavities of the brain,
set in motion the small gland which is, they say, the seat of the
soul, and by this means awaken and resuscitate the species of the
things that they have heard or seen formerly, which are, as it were,
enveloped within it, and form the internal reasoning which we call
thought. Whence comes it that beasts have memory as well as ourselves,
but not the reflections which accompany it, which proceed from the
soul, and that they have not.
"If what Mr. Digby, a learned Englishman, and chancellor of Henrietta,
Queen of England, Father Kircher, a celebrated Jesuit, Father Schort,
of the same society, Gaffarelli and Vallemont, publish of the
admirable secret of the palingenesis, or resurrection of plants, has
any foundation, we might account for the shades and phantoms which
many persons declare to have seen in cemeteries.
"This is the way in which these curious researchers arrive at the
marvelous operation of the palingenesis:--
"They take a flower, burn it, and collect all the ashes of it, from
which they extract the salts by calcination. They put these salts into
a glass phial, wherein having mixed certain compositions capable of
setting them in motion when heated, all this matter forms a dust of a
bluish hue; of this dust, excited by a gentle warmth, arises a stem,
leaves, and a flower; in a word, they perceive the apparition of a
plant springing from its ashes. As soon as the warmth ceases, all the
spectacle vanishes, the matter deranges itself and falls to the bottom
of the vessel, to form there a new chaos. The return of heat
resuscitates this vegetable phoenix, hidden in its ashes. And as the
presence of warmth gives it life, its absence causes its death.
"Father Kircher, who tries to give a reason for this admirable
phenomenon, says that the seminal virtue of every mixture is
concentrated in the salts, and that as soon as warmth sets them in
motion they rise directly and circulate like a whirlwind in this glass
vessel. These salts, in this suspension, which gives them liberty to
arrange themselves, take the same situation and form the same figure
as nature had primitively bestowed on them; retaining the inclination
to become what they had been, they return to their first destination,
and form themselves into the same lines as they occupied in the living
plant; each corpuscle of salt re-entering its original arrangement
which it received from nature; those which were at the foot of the
plant place themselves there; in the same manner, those which compose
the top of the stem, the branches, the leaves, and the flowers, resume
their former place, and thus form a perfect apparition of the whole
plant.
"It is affirmed that this operation has been performed upon a
sparrow;[669] and the gentlemen of the Royal Society of England, who
are making their experiments on this matter, hope to succeed in making
them on human beings also.[670]
"Now, according to the principle of Father Kircher and the most
learned chemists, who assert that the substantial form of bodies
resides in the salts, and that these salts, set in motion by warmth,
form the same figure as that which had been given to them by nature,
it is not difficult to comprehend that dead bodies being consumed away
in the earth, the salts which exhale from them with the vapors, by
means of the fermentations which so often occur in this element, may
very well, in arranging themselves above ground, form those shadows
and phantoms which have frightened so many people. Thus we may
perceive how little reason there is to ascribe them to the return of
spirits, or to demons, as some ignorant people have done.
"To all the authorities by means of which I have combated the
apparitions of spirits which are in purgatory, I shall still add some
very natural reflections. If the souls which are in purgatory could
return hither to ask for prayers to pass into the abode of glory,
there would be no one who would not receive similar entreaties from
his relations and friends, since all the spirits being disposed to do
the same thing, apparently, God would grant them all the same
permission. Besides, if they possessed this liberty, no sensible
person could understand why they should accompany their appearance
with all the follies so circumstantially related in those stories, as
rolling up a bed, opening the curtains, pulling off a blanket,
overturning the furniture, and making a frightful noise. In short, if
there were any reality in these apparitions, it is morally impossible
that in so many ages _one_ would not have been found so well
authenticated that it could not be doubted.
"After having sufficiently proved that all the apparitions which
cannot be ascribed to angels or to the souls of the blessed are
produced only by one of the three following causes--the extreme
subtility of the senses; the derangement of the organs, as in madness
and high fever; and the power of imagination--let us see what we must
think of the circumstance which occurred at St. Maur.
"Although you have already seen the account that has been given of it,
I believe, sir, that you will not be displeased if I here give you the
detail of the more particular circumstances. I shall endeavor to omit
nothing that has been done to confirm the truth of the circumstance,
and I shall even make use of the exact words of the author, as much as
I can, that I may not be accused of detracting from the adventure.
"Monsieur de S----, to whom it happened, is a young man, short in
stature, well made for his height, between four and five-and-twenty
years of age. Being in bed, he heard several loud knocks at his door
without the maid servant, who ran thither directly, finding any one;
and then the curtains of his bed were drawn, although there was only
himself in the room. The 22d of last March, being, about eleven
o'clock at night, busy looking over some lists of works in his study,
with three lads who are his domestics, they all heard distinctly a
rustling of the papers on the table; the cat was suspected of this
performance, but M. de S. having taken a light and looked diligently
about, found nothing.