It is not an uncommon case, nowadays, for pious persons at times of great
perplexity to seek a solution to their difficulties in their Bibles,
opening the book at random and taking the first passage which occurs as a
direct message to them from the Almighty.
The manner in which this questioning of the sacred oracles is performed is
serious. A considerable time is previously devoted to prayer, after which
the inquirer rises from his knees and consults the family Bible in the way
described. Whether such a manner of dealing with the Word of God be under
any circumstances justifiable, I do not pretend to judge. St. Augustine in
his 119th letter to Januarius seems not to disapprove of this custom, so
long as it be not applied to things of this world.
Gregory of Tours tells us what was his practice. He spent several days in
fasting and prayer, and in strict retirement, after which he resorted to
the tomb of St. Martin, and taking any book of Scripture which he chose,
he opened it, and took as answer from God the first passage that met his
eye. Should this passage prove inappropriate, he opened another book of
Scripture.
The eleventh chapter of Proverbs, which contains thirty-one verses, is
often taken to give omen of the character of a life. The manner of
consulting it is simple; it is but to look for the verse answering to the
day of the month on which the questioner was born. The answer will be
found in most cases to be exceedingly ambiguous.
The practice of consulting certain books for purposes of augury is of high
antiquity. Herodotus speaks of the custom, and of the fraud of
Oxomacritus, a celebrated diviner, who made use of Musœus for reference,
and who was driven out of Athens by Hipparchus, son of Pisistratus,
because he had been detected inserting in the verses of Musœus an oracle
predicting the disappearance in the waves of the islands near Lemnos.
Homer, and afterwards Virgil, were the poets most frequently consulted,
but Euripides was also regarded as divinely inspired to foretell the
future.
Two hundred years after the death of Virgil, his poems were laid up in the
temple at Prœneste, for consultations. Alexander Severus sought the oracle
in the reign of Heliogabalus, who feared and hated him; and the line of
Virgil he read told him that “if he could surmount opposing fates, he
would be Marcellus.” The Emperor Heraclius, when deliberating where to fix
his winter quarters, was determined by an oracle of this sort. He
purified his army during three days, and then opened the Gospels. The
passage he found was understood by him to indicate that he should winter
in Albania.
Nicephorus Gregoras relates how Andronicus the Elder was reconciled to his
nephew Andronicus in consequence of lighting on the verse of the Psalm
(lxviii. 14), “When the Almighty scattered kings for their sake, then were
they as white as snow in Salmon.” Whereby he concluded that all the
troubles that had been undergone by him had been decreed by God for his
purification.
With the same intent during the consecration of a bishop, at the moment
when the book of the Gospels was placed on his head, it was customary to
open the volume and gather from the verse at the head of the page an
augury of the prelate’s reign. This is illustrated in a curious ancient
painting of the consecration of St. Thomas à Becket by Van Eyck, shown in
the Leeds Fine Art Exhibition of 1868.
Chroniclers and biographers have not failed to mention several
prognostications given in this manner which were verified in the event.
At the consecration of Athanasius, nominated to the patriarchate of
Constantinople by Constantine Porphyrogenitus, a patriarchate which he
stained with his crimes, “Caracalla, bishop of Nicomedia, having brought
the Gospel,” says the historian Pachymerus, “the congregation prepared to
take note of the oracle which would be manifest on the opening of the
book, though this oracle is not infallibly true. The bishop of Nicæa,
noticing that he had lighted on the words, ‘Prepared for the devil and his
angels,’ groaned in the depth of his heart, and putting up his hand to
hide the words, turned over the leaves of the book, and disclosed the
other words, ‘The birds of the air come, and lodge in the branches’: words
which seemed far removed from the ceremony which was being celebrated. All
that could be done to hide these oracles was done, but it was found
impossible to conceal the truth. It was said that they did not forbid the
consecration, but that, nevertheless, they were not the effect of chance,
for there is no such a thing as chance in the celebration of the Sacred
Mysteries.”
“Landri, elected bishop of Laon,” says Guibert de Nogent, “received
episcopal unction in the Church of St. Ruffinus; but it was of sad portent
to him, that the text of the Gospel for the day was, ‘A sword shall pierce
through thine own soul also.’” After many crimes he was assassinated. He
was succeeded by the Dean of Orleans, whose name is not known. “The new
prelate having presented himself for consecration, people looked to see
what the Gospel would prognosticate; but it was opened at a blank page, as
though God had said, ‘I have nothing to foretell of this man, because he
will be, and will do, nothing.’ And in fact he died at the end of a very
few months.”
Guibert tells a story of himself, which shows that the same practice was
in vogue at the installation of an abbot. “On the day of my entry into the
monastery,” he writes, “a monk who had studied the sacred books desired, I
presume, to read my future; at the moment when he was preparing to leave
with the procession to meet me, he placed designedly on the altar the book
of the Gospels, intending to draw an omen from the direction taken by my
eyes towards this or that chapter. Now the book was written, not in pages,
but in columns. The monk’s eyes rested on the middle of the second column,
where he read the following passage, ‘The light of the body is the eye.’
Then he bade the deacon, who was to present the Gospel to me, to take
care, after I had kissed the cross on the cover, to hold his hand on the
passage he indicated to him, and then attentively to observe, as soon as
he had opened the book before me, on what part of the pages my eyes
rested. The deacon accordingly opened the book, after I had, as custom
required, pressed my lips upon the cover. Whilst he observed, with curious
eyes, the direction taken by my glance, my eye and spirit together turned
neither above nor below, but precisely towards the verse which had been
indicated before. The monk who had sought to form conjectures by this,
seeing that my action had accorded, without premeditation, with his
intentions, came to me a few days after, and told me what he had done, and
how wondrously my first movement had coincided with his own.”
Thomas Cantipratensis relates how that Cardinal Conrad, Archbishop of
Paris, was in doubt as to what reception he should give to the Order of
Preachers, some members of which had lately entered the city. He hesitated
as to their having been legitimately constituted, and questioned their
value. Whereupon he betook himself to prayer; and then going to the altar
opened the Missal at the words, “Laudare, benedicere, et predicare,”
whereupon his scruples vanished, and he extended to them the right hand of
fellowship.
“I know a religious man who had designed to serve God in the secular
life,” writes Paciuchelli (_In Jonam_, vol. i. p. 9); “he once poured
forth his prayers to God, and asked that he might be permitted, if it were
His will, to fulfil some desire or other that he had. Having asked the
opinion of certain persons of authority, he was recommended, after the
most sacred service, to open the Missal and to take note of what should
first arrest his attention. He followed this advice, and lo! the first
words which presented themselves to him were those of our Lord to the sons
of Zebedee, in St. Matt. xx. 23, ‘Ye know not what ye ask’; from which he
gathered clearly that were his wishes to be gratified, his eternal welfare
would be imperilled.”
I have heard of a young man in doubt as to his vocation for holy orders,
when he found his desire strongly opposed by his parents, inquiring of his
Bible in a similar spirit and manner, and reading, “He that loveth father
or mother more than me is not worthy of me.” I have been told of another
man in somewhat parallel circumstances, having lately awakened to
religious convictions after a life of great laxity, who sought guidance in
the same manner, and read, “Go home to thy friends, and tell them how
great things the Lord hath done for thee, and hath had compassion on
thee.”
A story of the baleful effects of this practice among Scotch Presbyterians
appeared in a collection of _Legends of Edinburgh_ by a recent writer. The
story related how a designing mother persuaded her reluctant daughter into
a marriage with a wealthy but dissipated youth, the son of their employer,
towards whom the girl felt great repugnance, by manipulating the Sortes
Sacræ so as to make the girl read, “Behold, Rebekah is before thee, take
her, and go, and let her be thy master’s son’s wife, as the Lord hath
spoken.” As the name of the young woman was Rebekah, the sentence seemed
to her to be a message from heaven.
Gregory of Tours mentions a couple of instances of omens taken from
Scripture. The one was that of Chramm, who had revolted against his father
Clothaire, and who marched to Dijon, where he consulted the Sacred
Oracles, by placing on the altar three books, the Prophets, the Acts, and
the Evangelists. In like manner, according to Gregory, Merovius, flying
from the wrath of his father Chilperic, and Fredigunda, placed on the tomb
of St. Martin three books, to wit, the Psalter, the Kings, and the
Gospels, and kept vigil through the night, praying the blessed confessor
to discover to him what was to happen to him. He fasted three days and
continued incessantly in prayer; then he opened the books, one after
another, and was so dismayed at the replies which he found, that he wept
bitterly beside the tomb, and then sadly left the basilica.
In 1115, differences having arisen touching the elevation of Hugh de
Montaigu to the Bishopric of Auxerre, the case was brought before Pope
Pascal II., who decided in favour of his consecration, and ordained him
himself. It was urged by his friends in his favour, that on the opening of
the book above his head, during the ceremony, these words stood out at the
head of the page, “_Ave Maria! graciâ plena!_” and this was regarded as a
token of his chastity, humility, and exemplary piety, and of the favour in
which he was held by the Blessed Virgin.
According to the use of the ancient church of Terouanne, on the reception
of a new canon, it was customary to open at random the Psalter, after that
the volume had been sprinkled by the dean with holy water, and the
paragraph at the head of the page was transcribed in the letters patent of
the new canon. The same custom was in force, as late as last century, in
the cathedral of Boulogne, and the bishop, De Langle, tried in vain in
1722 to abolish it.
The Bollandists relate that St. Petrock of Cornwall, when in doubt
whether to undertake a pilgrimage to the Holy Land or not, was decided by
opening his Bible at the passage in Isaiah, “_Et erit sepulchrum ejus
gloriosum_.” A similar story is told of St. Poppo, a Belgian saint of the
eleventh century.
The anecdote is well known of King Charles and Lord Falkland consulting
the Sortes Virgilianæ in the library at Oxford. The lines they met with
and which were so singularly verified afterwards, are marked with their
initials in the book, which is still preserved.
Rabelais refers to the Sortes Virgilianæ when he makes Panurge consult
them on the subject of his marriage.
Gregory of Tours, sad at heart because of the desolation produced by the
ravages of Count Leudaste in and around the city, entered his oratory;
“and,” as he tells us himself, “full of trouble, I took up the Psalms of
David, in hopes of finding, when I opened the book, some verse which might
bring me consolation. And I found this: ‘He brought them out safely, that
they should not fear; and overwhelmed their enemies with the sea.’”
Gregory relates another story akin to the subject. Clovis, at the moment
when he was marching against Alaric, king of the Visigoths, sent his
deputies to the Church of St. Martin, at Tours, saying to them, “Go, and
maybe, in the holy temple you will find some presage of victory.” After
having given them presents for the sacred place, he added: “O Lord God!
if Thou art on my side, if Thou art determined to deliver into my hands
this unbelieving nation, hostile to Thy name, grant that I may see Thy
favour, or the entry of my servants into the basilica of St. Martin, that
I may know if Thou deignest to be favourable to Thy suppliant.”
The envoys having hastened to Tours, entered the cathedral at the moment
when the Precentor gave out the Antiphon: “Thou hast girded me with
strength unto the battle: thou shalt throw down mine enemies under me.
Thou hast made mine enemies also to turn their backs upon me: and I shall
destroy them that hate me” (Ps. xviii. 37, 40).
Hearing this, they gave thanks to God, presented their offerings, and
returned with joy to announce the omen to their king.
Divination by Scripture has been forbidden by several national councils,
probably on account of the superstitious use made of it. The sixteenth
canon of the Council of Vannes, held in 465, forbids clerks under pain of
excommunication, consulting the Sortes Sacræ. This prohibition was
extended to the laity by the forty-second canon of the Council of Agde, in
506. “Aliquanti clerici sive laici student auguriis, et sub nomine fictœ
religionis, per eas, quas sanctorum sortes vocant, diviniationis scientiam
profitentur, aut quarumcunque scripturorum inspectione futura promittunt.”
It was also forbidden by the Council of Orleans in 511; again by that of
Auxerre in 595; by that of Selingstadt in 1022; by that of Enham, in
1009; and by a capitulary of Charlemagne, in 789.
Related to Sortes Sacræ are those messages which are supposed to be
conveyed by the chance hearing or reading of a passage of Scripture. These
are not, however, to be regarded in the light of superstition, and it is
quite possible, and indeed probable, that certain texts accidentally met
with may influence for good or bad those who are in a disposition of mind
to be so affected.
The well-known story of St. Augustine’s conversion is to the point. He
relates himself how sitting in a garden-house, in great trouble of mind,
he heard a voice say, “Tolle, lege”; whereupon he took up the sacred
Scriptures and read, “Not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and
envying; but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for
the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof” (Rom. xiii. 13, 14).
St. Anthony was moved to the assumption of the religious life by
accidentally hearing--“If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou
hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and
come and follow me” (St. Matt, xix. 21).
St. Louis when trying a murderer was much inclined by his natural
tenderness of disposition to pardon the man; but his resolution to let
justice take her course was strengthened by opening his Psalter at the
words, “Feci judicium et justitiam.”
But, to conclude, the true use of Holy Scripture is best learned from our
English Collect, which asks that we may read, mark, learn, and inwardly
digest its glorious lessons, taken as a whole, and not wring disjointed
directions for conduct from stray passages.