Witchcraft in America. Charles Wentworth Upham

      Chapter I.

       Table of Contents

      Compromise between the New and the Old Faiths—Witchcraft under the Early Church—The Sentiments of the Fathers and the Decrees of Councils—Platonic Influences—Historical, Physiological, and Accidental Causes of the Attribution of Witchcraft to the Female Sex—Opinions of the Fathers and other Writers—The Witch-Compact.

It might appear, in a casual or careless observation, surprising that Christianity, whose original spirit, if not universal practice, was to enlighten; whose professed mission was 'to destroy the works of the devil,' failed to disprove as well as to dispel some of the most pernicious beliefs of the pagan world: that its final triumph within the limits of the Roman empire, or as far as it extended without, was not attended by the extinction of at least the most revolting practices of superstition. Experience, and a more extended view of the progress of human ideas, will teach that the growth of religious perception is fitful and gradual: that the education of collective mankind proceeds in the same way as that of the individual man. And thus, in the expression of the biographer of Charles V., the barbarous nations when converted to Christianity changed the object, not the spirit, of their religious worship. Many of the ideas of the old religion were consciously tolerated by the first propagators of Christianity, who justly deemed that the new dogmas would be more readily insinuated into the rude and simple minds of their neophytes, if not too strictly uncompromising. Both past and present facts testify to this compromise. It was a maxim with some of the early promoters of the Christian cause, to do as little violence as possible to existing prejudices33—a judicious method still pursued by the Catholic, though condemned by the Protestant, missionaries of the present day.34 It was not seldom that an entire nation was converted and christianised by baptism almost in a single day: the mass of the people accepting, or rather acquiescing in, the arguments of the missionaries in submission to the will or example of their prince, whose conduct they followed as they would have followed him into the field. Such was the case at the conversion of the Frankish chief Clovis, and of the Saxon Ethelbert. But if St. Augustin or St. Boniface, and the earlier missionaries, had more success in persuading the simple faith of the Germans, without a written revelation and miracles, than the modern emissaries have in inducing the Hindus to abandon their Vedas, it was easier to convince them of the facts, than of the reason, of their faith. Nor was it to be expected that such raw recruits (if the expression may be allowed) should lay aside altogether prejudices with which they were imbued from infancy.

The extent of the credit and practice of witchcraft under the Church triumphant is evident from the numerous decrees and anathemas of the Church in council, which, while oftener treating it as a dread reality, has sometimes ventured to contemn or to affect to contemn it as imposture and delusion. Both the civil and ecclesiastical laws were exceptionally severe towards goetic practices. 'In all those laws of the Christian emperors,' says Bingham, 'which granted indulgences to criminals at the Easter festival, the venefici and the malefici, that is, magical practices against the lives of men, are always excepted as guilty of too heinous a crime to be comprised within the general pardon granted to other offenders.'35 In earlier ecclesiastical history, successive councils or synods are much concerned in fulminating against them. The council of Ancyra (314) prohibits the art under the name of pharmacy: a few years' penance being appointed for anyone receiving a magician into his house. St. Basil's canons, more severe, appoint thirty years as the necessary atonement. Divination by lots or by consulting their sacred scriptures, just as afterwards they consulted Virgil, seems to have been a very favourite mode of discovering the future. The clergy encouraged and traded upon this kind of divination: in the Gallican church it was notorious. 'Some reckon,' the pious author of the 'Antiquities of the Christian Church' informs us, 'St. Augustin's conversion owing to such a sort of consultation; but the thought is a great mistake, and very injurious to him, for his conversion was owing to a providential call, like that of St. Paul, from heaven.' And that eminent saint's confessions are quoted to prove that his conversion from the depths of vice and licentiousness to the austere sobriety of his new faith, was indebted to a legitimate use of the scriptures. St. Chrysostom upbraids his cotemporaries for exposing the faith, by their illegitimate inquiries, to the scorn of the heathen, many of whom where wiser than to hearken to any such fond impostures.

St. Augustin complains that Satan's instruments, professing the exercise of these arts, were used to 'set the name of Christ before their ligatures, and enchantments, and other devices, to seduce Christians to take the venomous bait under the covert of a sweet and honey potion, that the bitter might be hid under the sweet, and make men drink it without discerning to their destruction.' The heretics of the primitive, as well as of the middle, ages were accused of working miracles, and propagating their accursed doctrines by magical or infernal art. Tertullian, and after him Eusebius, denounce the arch-heretic Simon Magus for performing his spurious miracles in that way: and Irenæus had declared of the heretic Marcus, that when he would consecrate the eucharist in a cup of wine and water, by one of his juggling tricks, he made it appear of a purple and red colour, as if by a long prayer of invocation, that it might be thought the grace from above distilled the blood into the cup by his invocation. A correspondent of Cyprian, the celebrated African bishop, describes a woman who pretended 'to be inspired by the Holy Ghost, but was really acted on by a diabolical spirit, by which she counterfeited ecstasies, and pretended to prophesy, and wrought many wonderful and strange things, and boasted she would cause the earth to move. Not that the devil (he is cautious to affirm) has so great a power either to move the earth or shake the elements by his command; but the wicked spirit, foreseeing and understanding that there will be an earthquake, pretends to do that which he foresees will shortly come to pass. And by these lies and boastings, the devil subdued the minds of many to obey and follow him whithersoever he would lead them. And he made that woman walk barefoot through the snow in the depth of winter, and feel no trouble nor harm by running about in that fashion. But at last, after having played many such pranks, one of the exorcists of the Church discovered her to be a cheat, and showed that to be a wicked spirit which before was thought to be the Holy Ghost.'36

      Christian witchcraft was of a more tremendous nature than even that of older times, both in its origin and practice. The devils of Christianity were the metamorphosed deities of the old religions. The Christian convert was convinced, and the Fathers of the Church gravely insisted upon the fact, that the oracles of Delphi or Dodona had been inspired in the times of ignorance and idolatry by the great Enemy, who used the priest or priestess as the means of accomplishing his eternal schemes of malice and mischief. At the instant, however (so it was confidently affirmed), of the divine incarnation the oracular temples were closed for ever; and the demons were no longer permitted to delude mankind by impersonating pagan deities. They must now find some other means of effecting their fixed purpose. It was not far to seek. There were human beings who, by a preeminently wicked disposition, or in hope of some temporary profit, were prepared to risk their future prospects, willing to devote both soul and body to the service of hell. The 'Fathers' and great expounders of Christianity, by their sentiments, their writings, and their claims to the miraculous powers of exorcising, greatly assisted to advance the common opinions. Justin