§ 137. The Age passing Judgment upon Itself.
§ 137. The Age passing Judgment upon Itself.
The preceding pages have shown the remarkable character of the events and movements, the men and ideas which fill the centuries from Hildebrand’s entrance into Rome with Leo IX., 1049, to the abdication of the simple-minded Coelestin, 1294. The present generation regards the events of the last half-century as most extraordinary. The same judgment was passed by Matthew Paris upon the half-century of which he was a spectator, 1200–1250. Useful inventions and discoveries, such as we associate with the second half of the nineteenth century, there were few or none in the thirteenth century, and yet those times were full of occurrences and measures which excited the deepest interest and the speculation of men. The retrospect of the fifty years, which the clearheaded English monk sums up in his Chronicles, furnishes one of the most instructive pieces of mediaeval literature.
Here is what Matthew Paris says: There occurred in this time extraordinary and strange events, the like of which had never been seen before nor were found in any of the writings of the Fathers. The Tartars ravaged countries inhabited by Christians. Damietta was twice taken and retaken, Jerusalem twice desolated by the Infidel. St. Louis was captured with his brothers in the East. Wales passed under the domination of England. Frederick, the Wonder of the World, had lived his career. The Crusades had given to a great host a glorious death. As for natural wonders, an eclipse of the sun had occurred twice in three years, earthquakes had shaken England several times, and there had been a destructive rise of the sea such as had never been seen before. One night immense numbers of stars fell from the heavens, a reason for which could not be found in the Book of Meteors, except that Christ’s threat was impending when he said, "There shall be signs in the heavens."
Among things distinctively religious, the chronicler notes that an English cardinal was suffocated in his palace, as was supposed, for having his eye on the tiara. The figure of Christ appeared in the sky in Germany and was plainly seen by every one. Elizabeth of Hungary and St. Hildegard flourished. The ordeal of fire and water was abolished. Seville, Cordova, and other parts of Spain were rescued from the Moors. The orders of the Minorites and the Preachers arose, startling the world by their devotion and disgusting it by their sudden decline. Some of the blood of Christ and a stone, bearing his footprints, arrived in England.
Such are some of the occurrences which seemed wonderful to the racy English historian. If he had read over the leaves of his Chronicles as we do, how many other events he might have singled out,—from the appearance of the elephant, a gift of the king of France to the king of England, which, as he says, was the first ever seen in England and the appearance of the sea-monster thrown up in Norwich,2151 to his instructive accounts of the doings of popes and emperors, and the chafings of the English people under papal injustice.
Life was by no means a humdrum, monotonous existence to the people who lived in the age of the Crusades and Innocent III. On the contrary it was full of surprises and attractive movements, from every turn of the papacy and empire, to the expeditions of the Crusaders and the travels of Marco Polo and Rubruquis.
A historical period is measured by the judgment passed upon it by its contemporaries and by the judgment of succeeding generations. What did the period from 1050 to 1294 offer that seemed notable to those who were living then and what contribution did it make to the progress and well-being of mankind? The first of these questions can be answered by the generation which then lived; the second, best by the generations which have come since.
It is the persuasion of a school of mediaeval enthusiasts that this period was a golden age of faith and morals and tenable systems of belief, an age when the laws of God were obeyed as they have not been since, an age when proper attention was given to the things of religion, an age of high ideals and spiritual repose. Is this judgment justified or is the older Protestant view the right one that the Middle Ages handed down nothing distinctive—which has been of permanent value; but, on the contrary, many of the superstitions and false doctrines now prevailing in the Church are an inheritance from the Middle Ages, and it would have been better if the Church had passed directly from the patristic age and skipped the mediaeval.2152
Neither judgment is right. A more just opinion is beginning to prevail, and upon a modification of the extreme views of Protestants and Roman Catholics on the subject depends to a considerable extent the closer fellowship between the ecclesiastical communions of the West. Much chaff will be found there mixed with the wheat. On the other hand, in this mediaeval period were also sown the seeds of religious ideas and institutions which are now in their period of bloom or awaiting the time of full fruitage.
The achievement of absolute power by the papacy, magnificent as it was, represents an ideal utterly at fault, whether we consider the teaching of Scripture or the prevailing judgment of the present time. Ambition, pride, avarice, were mingled in popes with a sincere belief that the Roman see inherited from the Apostle plenitude of authority in all realms. Europe, more enlightened, cannot accept such a claim and the moral degeneracy and spiritual incompetency of the popes, in the period following this, were an experimental proof that the theory was wrong.
As for the priesthood and hierarchy, evidence enough has been adduced to show that ordination did not insure devotion to office and personal purity. Dante’s hell contains more than one pontiff of this period. The nearer we approach Rome, the more numerous the scandals are. The term "the Romans" was synonymous with unscrupulous greed. Gregory X. in 1274 declared that "the prelates were the ruin of Christendom." Frederick II., though pronounced a poor churchman, was a keen observer and no doubt indicated a widespread discontent with the lives the clergy were leading when he declared that, if they would change their mode of living, the world might again see miracles as in the days of old.2153
The distinctively mediaeval ideal of a religious life has little attraction to-day. The seclusion of the monastery presents a striking contrast to the active career demanded of a Christian profession in this age. The example of St. Bernard and his praise of monasticism, as the praise of other writers, are so weighty that one cannot deny that the best men saw in monastic solitude the highest advantage. Monastic institutions had a most useful part to play as a leavening force in the wild and unsettled society of that time. But the discipline and ardor of monastic orders quickly passed away, in spite of the devotion of Francis d’Assisi and other monastic founders. Simplicity yielded to luxury, and spiritual devotion to sloth and pride. It was the ardent Franciscan, Bonaventura, who instances the vices which had crept into his order and Jacques de Vitry, cardinal-bishop, d. 1240, who said that a girl’s virtue was safe under no Rule except the Cistercian. What can be said of the ideal of human life as it is set forth in the tale of St. Brandon, not to speak of innumerable similar tales told by Jacob de Voragine, archbishop of Genoa, d. 1298! What shall be thought of the example of the Blessed St. Angela of Foligno, admired and praised by so many Franciscan writers, who on her "conversion" prayed to be relieved of the impediments of obedience to husband, respect to mother and the care of children and rejoiced to have her request granted by their deaths!
If we desire priestly rule, there was enough of it to satisfy any one. But with the rule of the priesthood came the loss of individual freedom and the right of the soul to determine its own destiny in the sight of the Creator. De Voragine2154 speaks of Thomas à Becket, by great abstinence making his body lean and his soul fat. He had a right to do as he pleased. But it was the same prelate who expressed the hierarchical pride of the age when he exclaimed to an English king that priests are the fathers and masters of kings. The laity, according to Caesar of Heisterbach, as already quoted, were compared to the night, the clergy to the day, The preacher Werner of St. Blasius called the peasants the feet whose toil was appointed to maintain the more worthy parts of the body,—bishops, priests, and monks.2155 The thinkers of this period had no vision of the Reformation.
The Middle Ages have been praised as a period of religious contentment and freedom from sectarian strife. The very contrary was the case. The strife between the friars and the secular clergy and, in cases, within the monastic orders themselves equals in bitterness any strife that has been maintained between branches of the Protestant Church. It was a question not whether there was religious unrest but, from the days of Arnold of Brescia on, how the established Church might crush out heretical revolt. There was also religious doubt among the monks, and there were women who denied that Eve had been tempted by an apple, as Caesar of Heisterbach assures us.
The superstitions which prevailed were largely inherited from preceding ages. The worship of Mary clouded the merits of Christ. What can be said when Thomas of Chantimpré, d. about 1263, relates in all seriousness that a robber, whose head had been cut off, kept calling upon the Virgin, as the body rolled down a hill, until the parts were put together by a priest. The criminal then told how, as a boy, he had devoted Saturdays and Wednesdays to Mary and she had promised he should not die till opportunity was given him to make confession. So he made confession and died again, and, as the reader is left to believe, went into the other world rejoicing.
The gruesome tales of demoniacal presence and influence indicate a condition of mind from which we do well to be thankful we are delivered. John of St. Giles, the admirable English Dominican, used to say, as he retired to his cell in the evening, "Now I await my martyrdom," meaning the buffetings of the devil. The awful story of how Ludwig the Iron, 1100–1172, was welcomed to hell and shown all its compartments and then pitched mercilessly into quenchless flames is no worse than the visions of Dante, but too revolting in the apparent callousness of it to the suffering of others not to call forth a shudder to-day.2156
Such representations, however, do not warrant the conclusion that human charity was dead. St. Francis and Hugh of Lincoln kissed the hands of lepers. The Knights of St. Lazarus were intrusted by Louis IX. with the care of this class of sufferers. Houses for lepers were established in England by Lanfranc, Mathilda, queen of Henry, King Stephen at Burton, and others. Mathilda washed their feet, believing that, in so doing, she was washing the feet of Christ.2157 The oldest of the military orders and the Teutonic Knights, as well as other orders, were organized to care for the sick and distressed.
On the other hand the period sets, in some respects, an example of great devotion, and has handed down to us the universities and the cathedrals, some of the most tender hymns and imposing theological systems which, if they cannot be accepted in important particulars, are yet remarkable constructions of thought and piety. And, above all, it has handed down to us a group of notable men who may well serve as a stimulus to all generations which are interested in the extension of Christ’s kingdom.
But in the judgment of these very men, the period was not an ideal one either in morals or faith. If we go to preachers, like Berthold of Regensburg, we find evidence of the prevalence of vice and irreligion among all classes. If we go to popes and Schoolmen, we hear bitter complaints of the evils of the age and of human lot which would fit in with the most pessimistic philosophy of our times. Innocent III., in his Disdain of the World,—De contemptu mundi,—poured out a lamentation, lugubrious enough for the most desolate and forsaken. Anselm dilates under the same title, and Hugo of St. Victor2158 carries on the plaint in his Vanity of the World—De vanitate mundi. Walter Map wrote on the world’s misery—de mundi miseria, declaring that the world was near its destruction, that justice was exiled from society and the worship of Christ was coming to an end.
Exulat justitia, cessat Christi cultus.
The most famous of the longer
poems of the period repeats Innocent’s title, and its author, Bernard of Cluny,
is most severe upon the corruption in church and society. The poem starts in
the minor key.
The last times, the worst times are here, watch.
Behold the Judge, supreme, is at hand with His wrath.
He is here, He is here. He will terminate the evils. He will reward the just.
Hora novissima, tempora pessima sunt, vigilemus
Ecce minaciter, imminet arbiter ille supremus.
Imminet, imminet, et mala terminet, aequa coronet.
The greater Bernard of Clairvaux exclaimed, "Oh! that I might, before dying, see the Church of God led back to the ideal of her early days. Then the nets were cast, not to catch gold and silver, but to save souls. The perilous times are not impending. They are here. Violence prevails on the earth."2159 The Englishman, Adam Marsh, writing to Grosseteste, spoke of "these most damnable times," his diebus damnatissimis.2160 Edmund of Abingdon, archbishop of Canterbury, dying in exile at Potigny, exclaimed, "I have lived too long, for I see all things going to ruin; Lord God receive my soul."2161 Roger Bacon found rottenness and decay everywhere, and he agreed with other moralists of his day, in making the clergy chiefly responsible for the prevailing corruption. The whole clergy, he says, "is given to pride, avarice, and self-indulgence. Where clergymen are gathered together, as at Paris and Oxford, their quarrels and strife, and their vices are a scandal to laymen."2162
With a similar lament Hildebrand, at the opening of the period, took up the duties of the papacy.
The prophet Joachim looked for a new dispensation as the only relief.
The real greatness of this period lies not in its relative moral and religious perfection, as compared with our own, but in a certain imposing grandeur of conception and of faith, as shown in the Crusades, the cathedrals, the Scholastic systems, and even the mistaken ideal of papal supremacy. Its institutions were not in a settled condition, and its religious life was not characterized by repose. A tremendous struggle was going on. The surface was troubled, and there was a mighty undercurrent of restlessness. It would be an ungracious and a foolish thing for this generation, the heir of twice as many centuries of Christian schooling as were the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, to boast as though Christian charity and morality and devotion to high aims had waited until now to manifest themselves. The Middle Ages, from 1050 to 1300, offer a spectacle of stirring devotion to religious aims in thought and conduct.
Peltier’s ed., XIV. 181. A free translation runs, "Hail, heavenly lily, Hail most graceful rose, Hail mother of the lowly, Reigning on high, Couch of deity; Give to us in this valley of tears strength, Lend aid O thou palliator of sins."
2 sinus, bosom; pectus, breast; viscera bowels; ubera, breasts; uterus, etc.
Bonaventura, Speculum, III. Peltier’s ed., XIV. 240.
Migne, 145. 566
Ir antlutze war so tugentliche, Ir ougen also kunchliche, Ir gebaerde also reine, Das sich ze ir glichte deheine, Under allen den frouen, quoted by von Eicken, p. 477.
The word used is concupiscentia, the usual word for lust. Migne, 183. 62.
Specialissime et spiritualissime. Migne, 210. 53.
See von Eicken, p. 481. In a song to Mary written by the Dominican, Eberhard of Saxony, in the thirteenth century, occur the lines:—
Got in sinem hohen trone hat begehrt diner schone
Da er wil, o wiber Krone mit gelüste dich ansehen.
"God on His throne desired thy beauty and wanted, O crown of womanhood, to look on thee with passion."
Orationes, LII., Migne, 158. 954.
De laud. Mariae, Borgnet’s ed., XXXVI. 600-840.
These works may not all be genuine. They belong, at least, to Bonaventura’s age.
De assump., Migne, 183. 430; De nativ. Mariae, Migne, 183. 441; Supermissus III., Migne, 183. 70
In Sent., III. 1, 2, Peltier’s ed., IV. 63.
Orat., LVIII, LX. Migne, 158. 964, 966.
Dreves, Analecta, I. 48 sqq.
De variis mirac., Migne, 145. 586 sq.; De bono suffr., Migne, 145. 564
Dial., VII. 13, 19, XI. 12, VII. 12, 39, 40, 51, etc.
Dial., VII. 38.
II. 264.
The Assumption of Mary. Temple Classics, IV. 249.
Hase, Miracle Plays, 31.
De Mariae virg., Migne, 173. 872. Bernard even uses the word "impregnate," impregnare to indicate the Spirit’s influence. Migne, 183. 59.
Cur Deus homo, II. 8; De concept. virg., Migne, 158. 445.
Summa III. 28, 1, etc., Migne, IV. 258, 262, 294, 298, etc.
In Sent., III. 5, IV. 3, 1, PeItier’s ed., IV. 53 sqq., V. 59.
Ep., 174, Migne, 332-336.
Sententia communior, rationabilior et securior. Peltier’s ed., IV. 67.
Summa, III. 27, 4, Migne, IV. 252.
Si auctoritati eccles. vel scripturae non repugnet videtur probabile quod excellentius est attribuere Mariae videlicet quod non sit inoriginali peccato concepta. Sent., III. 3 Paris ed., XIV. 165. See Seeberg, p. 247 sq., and Schwane, p. 424 sqq.
Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, II. 211.
Addis and Arnold, Cath. Dict., 6th ed., commend the tradition as inherently probable as no relics of Mary’s body have ever been found.
Damiani, De Mirac., Migne, 146. 586.
De bono suffr. Migne, 145. 564.
According to Caesar of Heisterbach, the Ave Maria took the place of sugar and honey in the mouths of nuns who repeated it on their knees daily fifty times and it tasted like honey. A priest who tried it found, after six weeks, that his spittle had turned to honey. Sermons, as quoted by Cruel, Gesch. d. Deutschen Predigt, p. 284.
De laude virginis. Migne, 183. 58.
Th. Aq., Summa, III. 25, 6, Migne, IV. 240 sq.; Bonavent., Peltier’s ed., IV. 206 sq., VIII. 196. Thornas accords a single brief chapter to relics and quotes Augustine but not Scripture in favor of their vvorship.
Bonavent., III. 27, 2, Peltier’s ed., IV. 619.
Coulton’s ed., p 253.
De pignoribus. Migne, 156. 649 sqq.
Among the legends of its discovery is the following: Herod gave the coat to a Jew because the drops of blood would not come out. The Jew threw it into the sea. A whale swallowed it. Orendel, son of the king of Treves, on his way to Jerusalem caught the fish and rescued the garment. It is described as five feet one inch long, and of the color of a sponge.
See Wetzer-Welte, Der hl. Rock, X. 1229 sqq.
Luard’s ed., IV. 641-643.
Luard, Vl. 138-144. See Stevenson’s Grosseteste, p. 263.
De Vinsauf, Chronicle of Richard’s Crusade, LIV.
Luard’s M. Paris, IV. 90 sq.; De Voragine, VII. 210.
Luard’s ed., III. 30 sq.
Dial., VIII 67, Strange’s ed., II. 138.
Dial., VIII. 68, 85.
Migne, 156. 627.
Hauck, IV. 74.
Treves, Cologne, and Aachen were distinguished by the number of their reliquiary possessions. Gelenius, a Cologne priest, in his de admiranda sacra et civili magnitudine Coloniae, 1645, enumerated a great number of relics to be found In Cologne, such as pieces of the true cross, the manger, some of the earth on which Mary stood when she received the angelic announcement, one of John the Baptist’s teeth, a piece of his garment, hairs from the head of Bartholomew, and remains of the children of Bethlehem. As recently as Nov. 30, 1898, the archbishop of Cologne announced that one of St. Andrew’s arms would be shown after having lain in repose for one hundred years. It was found in a chest with other relics which had been packed away during the French Revolution.
See Hurter’s judgment of Innocent as a preacher, II. 729 sqq.
Spec. eccles., Migne, 172. 862.
Cruel, pp. 210, 262.
Jessopp, Coming of the Friars, p. 86.
Linsenmayer, p. 125 sqq.
Salimbene, Coulton’s ed., p. 305.
Hurter, IV. 507; Cruel, p. 217.
His homiliarium was ed. by Hecht, 1863,
Dial., IV. 36.
Dargan, p. 229, says that "probably the largest audiences ever gathered to hear preaching" were gathered in the thirteenth century.
Speculum ecclesiae, Lyons, 1554.
Quo ordine sermo fieri debeat, Migne, 157. 20-34.
Summa de arte praedicatoria, Migne, 210. 111-198.
De eruditione praedicatorum.
Quoted by Cruel, p. 249.
See Vacandard, S. Bernard, I. 474 sqq., and Storrs, St. Bernard, pp. 355-427, Migne, 183. 73-747, 784-1105.
Art. Bernard, in Herzog, II. 634.
A. Charasson, Un curé plébéien au XIIe siècle Foulques, curé de Veuilly, Paris, 1905.
Peltier’s ed., XIII. 1-636, etc. For Thomas’ sermons, see Bourin, La prédication en France et les sermons de Thomas, Paris, 1882. Vaughan is fulsome in praise of Thomas as a preacher. Life, etc., I. 459 sq., II. 104 sqq., 112-117.
The writer in Wetzer-Welte, I. 995, declarcs that the tongue remains whole to this day. See Lempp, Leben d. hl. Antonius v. Padua.
The works and collections of Berthold’s sermons are numerous. Cruel, pp. 307-322; Linsenmayer, pp. 333-354; E. Bernhardt, Bruder Berthold von Regensb., etc., Erf., 1905. Ed. of his sermons by Kling, Berlin, 1824; Pfeiffer, Vienna, 1862; J. Strobel, 2 vols. Vienna, 1880; Gobel, 2 vols. Schaffh., 1850; 4th ed., Regensb., 1905; alsoPredigten a. d. Sonn und Festtagen, 2 vols. 1884; G. Jacob, D. Iatein. Reden d. Berthold, etc., Regensb., 1880.
See Cruel, 146-208; Linsenmayer, 191-320.
Migne, vol. 172. See Rocholl, in Herzog, VIII. 327-331; Endres, Honor. August., Leip., 1903. Honorius called himself Augustoduniensis, but it is doubtful whether Autun or Strassburg is meant.
Old Engl. Hom., II. 14.
II, 209 sqq.
In No. XXXV., 254-270, Dreves gives two psalteries, ascribed to Anselm.
Anal. Hymn., XLVII. 11 sq.
Blume has collected hundreds of tropes in Anal. Hymn. They extended from two or three to as many as fifty lines. Gautier was the first to call the attention of modern students to this forgotten form of med. poetry.
They are found in prose renderings in the Primer of Sarum of about 1400 (ed. by Maskell, Mon. ritualia, Vol. III.). Daniel gives all three, I. 276, etc. Dreves gives the adesto and thefesti laudes, No. IV., 14, and calls the former, "a hymn in the strict sense of the word." See No. XXIII., 5, 6, where Dreves pronounces Peckham as, beyond dispute, their author.
Two addressed to Mary and one to God are given by Morris, Old Engl. Hom., II. 255 sqq.
Hauck, IV. 60.
Linsenmayer, Deutsche Predigt, pp. 70, 132.
Migne, 145. 930 sqq. See Libr. of Rel. Poetry, pp. 897, 880.
Cousin gave 97 of these poems in his ed. of Abaelard, 1849.
Apol. pro Abaelardo, Migne, 178. 1857.
See Herold, Bernhard’s Hymnen, in Herzog, II. 649. The text of the hymns is found in Migne, 184. 1307 sqq., and in part in Schaff, Lit. and Poetry, etc. Mabillon, whose edition Migne reproduced, casts doubt upon the genuineness of all but two of these poems, and Vacandard (Vie de S. Bern., II. 103) and Haureau (Les poèms attribués à S. Bern., Paris, 1890) upon all of them. But they are ascribed to Bernard by the oldest tradition and no one can be found so likely to be their author as Bernard, Herold advocates the Bernardian authorship.
Ninety-six lines of the original were made known to English readers by Trench. Neale’s transl. is given in the Libr. of Rel. Poetry, pp. 981-985; a prose transl. of the whole poem by Dr. S. M. Jackson, in Am. Journ. of Theol., 1906. See note in Schaff’s Christ in Song, Lond. ed., pp. 511 sq.
For this reason Flacius Illyricus printed the poem entire in his collection of poems on the corruption of the Church,—Varia doctorum piorumque virorum de corrupto eccles. statu poemata, Basel, 1557. I have a copy of this rare volume.
Deutsch, art. Adam de S. Victor, Herzog, I. 164, Migne, vol. 196, gives 36 of Adam’s poems. Gautier, in 1858, found 106 in the Louvre library, whither they had been removed at the destruction of St. Victor during the Revolution. He regards 45 as genuine.
Wrangham has given translations of all of Adam’s hymns. March gives eight poems in the original. Some of these have gone into English Hymnals. See Julian, p. 15.
Julian, pp. 662 sqq., 878 sqq. Also Christ in Song, Engl. ed., pp. 467 sqq. Daniel gives five of Thomas’ hymns, I. 251-256, II. 97.
The first mention of his authorship is in the liber conformitatum, about 1380. The oldest MS. is a Dominican missal in the Bodleian of the same date.
Lit. and Poetry pp. 135-186.
Julian, pp. 299 sqq., gives a list of 133 versions, 19 of which are used in hymn books. The London Athenaeum, July 26, 1890, gave a still larger list of 87 British and 92 American translations. The first English version is that of Joshua Sylvester, 1621, and one of the best, that of W. J. Irons, 1848.
102 Caswall’s transl. Dr. Schaff gives a number of versions. Lit. and Poetry, pp. 187-218.
The companion hymn, Stabat mater speciosa, "Stands the fair mother," ascribed to the same author, was discovered in 1852. See Lit. and Poetry, pp. 219-230.
See Julian, pp. 1080-1084, the art. Jacopone, by Lauxmann-Lempp, in Herzog, VIII. 516-519, and the references to Wadding there given. The Florentine ed. of his works, 1490, contains 100 Italian poems; the Venetian ed. of 1614, 211.
Eicken, p 674
Not from mysterium. The early French word was misterre. The term "mystery" was not used in England. The terms in use were plays, miracles, and miracle-plays.
The text is given by Migne, 137. 975-1062, together with some poems attributed to Hroswitha, one of which, "The Fall and Conversion of St. Theophilus," has often been regarded as the original of the tale of Faust.
See Blume, Tropen d. Missale in Analecta hymn., XLVII. 7.
Chambers II. 310.
Pollard, p. xix. M. Paris calls it a "miracle,"—quem miracula vulgariter appellamus.
The meaning of Innocent’s brief is disputed. It may have reference only to the Feast of Fools. The text is in the Decretals, III. 1, 12, Friedberg’s ed., II. 452.
Dial., X. 28, Strange’s ed., II. 238,
Gregorovius, Hist. of the City of Rome, VI. 712.
Luard’s ed., pp. 118, 161. On these festivals, see Eselsfest, in Herzog, V. 497 sq., and Feste, in Wetzer-Welte, IV. 1398-1407; Chambers, I. 274-372.
Called also festum hypodiaconorum, feast of the deacons, etc.
Hist. of City of Rome, V. 333. They were called flagellarii, flagellantes, crucifratres, verberantes, cruciferi, acephali, or independents, from the charge that they had broken with the heretics.
Migne, 144. 1017. Damiani says of Loricatus, lorica ferrea vestitur ad carnem, Migne, 145. 747. He compared the body to a timbrel which is to be struck in praise to God.
Coulton, From St. Francis to Dante, pp. 192 sq.
Alex. of Hales distinguished eight sorts of demonic agency through human instrumentalities, mantic, sortilegium, maleficium, augurium, prestigium, mathesis or astrology, ariolatio, and the interpretation of dreams.
De nug. curalium, Wright’s ed., II. 14; Polycrat., Bk. I. VIII.–XIII. Migne, 199. 404 sqq.
De mir., Migne, 189. 883.
The Roman de la Rose, 1280, is an exception and makes light of tail and horns, and the belief that women are transported through the air at night.
Dial., V. 53, etc., Strange’s ed., I. 336.
Dial., V. 5, Strange’s ed., I. 287 sqq.
Dial., III. 11, V. 28, 45, Strange’s ed., I. 123, 311, 330.
Dial., V. 11, 26, 34.
Vita Norb., XIII.
Vita Norb., XIV.
Dial., III. 6.
Dial., III. 6, 7, 13, 14, VII, 25, etc.
Temple ed., V. 88.
Coulton, From St. Francis, etc., p. 298.
Lib. revelationum de insidiis et versutiis daemonum, quoted by Cruel, Deutsche Predigt, p. 268.
Daemones in hoc aere caliginoso sunt ad nostrum exercitium. Th. Aq., Summa, I. 64, 4. So also P. Lomb., II. 7, 6.
Zonas, interstitia. In sent., II. 6, 5, Borgnet’s ed., XXVII. 132.
Aquinas’ treatment is found in his Summa, I. 51 sqq., II. 94-96, Migne, I. 893 sqq., II. 718 sqq.; P. Lombard, Sent., II. 7 sqq.
Praestigia is the word used by Alb. Magnus, John of Salisbury, etc.
This is stated at length by Thomas Aquinas, Summa, I. 51, 3, idem daemon qui est succubus ad virum fit incubus ad mulierem. For other quotations to the same effect from Bonaventura, Duns Scotus, etc., see Hansen, p. 186. Albertus Magnus, Borgnet’s ed., XXVII. 175, speaks of immense cats appearing at these assignations, but the passage is too foul to be repeated. This Schoolman went so far as to say that demons preserved human seed in vessels. As an instance of ultramontane honesty, Hoensbroech, D. Papstthum, I. 222, cites the Dominican Schneider who, in his German translation of Thomas Aquinas, omits altogether the passage, part of which has just been quoted, though he makes the introductory assertion that the translation contains the "entire text."
Merlin, the "prophet of Britain" as Caesar of Heisterbach calls him, Dial., III. 12, Strange’s ed., 1. 124. The nun was seduced on a night when she happened to retire without making the sign of the cross. It was thought by some that anti-christ would be engendered in this way.
an., 1249. The child in six months had a full set of teeth and was of the stature of a boy of 17, the mother wasted away and died.
Dial., V. 12.
See quotation in Kaufmann’s Caesar of Heisterbach, II. 80.
Sometimes demons took the place of loose women with whom priests had made assignations, Dial., III. 10. Caesar tells of a woman who had committed whoredom with a demon for seven years and, while confessing her sin to the priest, fell dead.
He gives a full chapter to the subject. In Sent., IV. 34, 1.
Wright’s ed., p. 61. plurimi sub cauda, plerique pudenda.
A translation of the bull dated June, 1233, Potthast, I. no. 9230, is given by Hoensbroech, I. 215 sqq.
Hansen dates the new treatment of sorcery by the Church with 1230 and carries the period on to 1430, when he dates the period of witchcraft and its punishment by the Church.
Hansen, Quellen, p. 1.
Hansen gives a number of such bulls and quotes an author who speaks of 103 papal bulls directed against sorcery, a number Hansen doubts. Quellen, p. 1.
Hansen, Quellen, pp. 43 sqq., gives it under the title forma et modus interrogandi augures et ydolatras, and assigns it to 1270, Gesch., p. 243. Douais places it a little earlier. A portion of Bernard Gui’s Practica inquisitionis (1320) is an interrogatory of practisers of the occult arts, interrog. ad sortileges et divinos ei invocatores daemonum. See Douais’ ed., Paris, 1886.
2151 Luard’s ed., V. 448 sq.
2152 For a terse description of the social, religious, and moral condition of mediaeval England and the prevalence of disease, see Jessopp, Coming of the Friars, p. 111, etc.
2153 M. Paris, Luard’s ed., IV. 538 sq.
2154 Legenda, Temple Classics ed., II. 189.
2155 Migne, 157. 1047,
2156 Heisterbach, Dial., XII. 2, Strange’s ed., II. 316.
2157 See Creighton in Traill, I. 368 sq., and Geo. Pernet, Leprosy, in Quart. Rev., 1903, pp. 384 sqq.
2158 Migne, 158. 705 sqq., 176. 703-739.
2159 Ep., 238, to Eugenius, Migne, 182. 430. De consid. I. 10.
2160 Mon. Franc., Ep. XXVI. p. 116
2161 Creighton, Hist. Lectures, p. 132
2162 Brewer’s ed., pp. 399 sqq.