A Cursory History of Swearing. Julian Sharman
in listening to the representations that were offered him.
It would seem, indeed, from the practice of half barbarous nations, that so far from the Deity, or even the monuments of religion, being the immediate subject of the swearing obligation, these were practically the most remote. During the second siege of Rome by the Goths, the ministers of Honorius were called upon to swear solemnly that they would refuse to entertain any overtures of peace, and would wage implacable warfare upon the enemy. With great difficulty were they induced to confirm this engagement with an oath taken by the head of the emperor. This formula was the most impressive and, in effect, the most binding that could well have been resorted to, and it is reported by Gibbon that the ministers were heard to declare that had the same oath been taken by the name of the Deity they would have held themselves free to depart from it. In doing blind obeisance to the arms of warfare or the symbols of authority, the ancient world only varied from the modern as the usages of religion differ from those of idolatry. In Rome, we are told, the spear was sacred to Juno, and in the province of Rhegium was worshipped as Mars. In Scythia the sword was glorified as the messenger of life and death. And it is to be noticed as an evidence of the superstitious sanctity that pervaded warlike implements, that in Rome, according to a half-religious rite, the hair of newly-married women was parted with the point of a spear. The oaths, in fine, of the Western military nations distinctly breathe of the spirit of war, while those of the more dreamful Eastern world are redolent of light and air, of sun and shade. To this day in Servia the popular forms of swearing express dependence and reliance upon the powers of nature. Taku mi Suntza, So help me sun; Taku mi Semlje, So help me earth, are the methods of asseveration that are in every-day use.
That period in modern history at which the deliberative oath had assumed something of its ultimate shape is marked by the occurrence of one singular invasion of its solemnity. The incident we refer to is the charge preferred by Thomas-à-Becket against John the Marshal, to the effect that he had sworn upon a “book of old songs” instead of upon the sacred writings which had then become the proper instruments for this purpose. Indeed, in tracing the history of these observances it would seem as if an endeavour was being constantly made to frustrate the aims and ends of swearing, and that the more Christian modes were only resorted to when every pagan method had been found inoperative. To swear upon the authority of everything that was terrible or grotesque—by the sword or javelin of a conquering nation, as by the love-token on a maiden’s sleeve;[1] by the sepulchre of a debtor;[2] by the abbey church at Glastonbury,[3] or by the price of the potter’s field[4]—these were expedients that had been tried and been forsaken before the modern forms of swearing were reached. Like the time-expired worship of the divinities of the mythology that, in the one solitary temple of Mount Casano, was maintained for some hundred years after the gods of Olympus had been deposed: so the impious oaths of pagandom continued to jostle and wrestle with those of Christianity for many centuries after authority had pronounced their doom. “Olympian Jupiter!” exclaims Aristophanes, at the mention of that oath, “to think of your believing in Jupiter, as old as you are!”
How stubbornly the ground was contested may be inferred from the enactments of civil and ecclesiastical law. So early as the ninth century, Justinian prescribed the punishment of death for the offence of swearing by the limbs of God. The code that prevailed in the northern districts of Britain was more severe than any that was enforced elsewhere in these islands. By statutes of Donald VI. and Kenneth II., the penalty of cutting out the tongue was inflicted upon swearers. In France, Charlemagne legislated expressly against the practice of impious oath-taking, and by an edict of Philip II. swearers were condemned to drowning in the Seine.[5] The Council of Constantinople passed a sentence of excommunication upon the swearers of heathen oaths.
To how great an extent this unmeaning discord disturbed the current of mediæval life may be seen from an examination of contemporary literature. In particular, we may instance an early fragment that has come down to us, and was evidently intended as a glowing satire upon the prevalence of the abuse. It is called the “Moralité des Blasphémateurs,” and was issued from the Paris press in the early part of the sixteenth century. The whole design of the piece is to exhibit the supposed agency of the potentates of Hell in proselytising mankind towards the adoption of the most abhorrent blasphemy. Satan, according to demonologists once the governor of the north of Heaven, is now a feudatory prince in the kingdom of Beelzebub. He is presumed to act under the orders of Lucifer, the judge of Hell, and is joined in his commission by Behemoth, the henchman and cupbearer of the infernal chiefs. There is a sufficiency of invective in the opening greeting of these personages that was doubtless calculated to add to the repulsive character of the performance:—
“Sathan, ennemy traistre et faulx,
Où es tu mauldict loricart?”
To which Satan replies:—
“Que veulx tu, mauldict Lucifer?
Que te fault-il, beste saulvaige?”
Their salutation finished, these worthies proceed to recount the sport they have had on earth. Satan has visited the land of France, where he has spent his time in the company of horse-stealers and cattle-lifters, fellows, he assures them, who have no thought for mass or vespers; and he has left them feasting day and night, getting as drunk as herons. This account of his stewardship seems to give but small satisfaction to Lucifer, who thereupon bids his followers—
“Allez tost par mons et par vaulx
Faire jurer le nom de Dieu
A garses et à garsonneaulx
En toute place et en tout lieu.
C’est une belle operation
De jurer Dieu à chascun point.”
This strain of conversation continues through over a hundred pages of closely-printed matter, and is only varied by the exordiums of certain more admirable characters, who are introduced, as we must suppose, to point a moral to the story.
The state of feeling disclosed by this offensive farce shows plainly, even at that time, that the public which tolerated it had passed out of a state of mere supineness and had assumed an attitude of disrespect and defiance towards the authority of oaths. The system had been allowed to overreach itself, and thenceforward its set forms and all the paraphernalia that pertained to them were made over to the service of criminality and to the uses of violent speech. The modern practice of swearing, in either its flippant or vituperative shape, is derived from the break-up of the process once devised as a protection of truthfulness and fair dealing. So nearly allied have been the oaths of piety and statecraft with those of violence and malice, that the severer thinkers, whether Lollards, Puritans, or Quakers, have waged a war of extermination against both alike. They have contended, and with some amount of probability, that these jarring expletives of passion and irreligion have only been perpetuated by reason of the familiarity that has ensued from the undue exaction of legal tests. The same stubbornness with which they combated the evil in endless tracts and broadsides they maintained before courts and inquisitions. At the Lancaster Assizes of 1664, George Fox and Mrs. Margaret Fell stood upon their trial for refusing to conform. “I have never laid my hand on the book to swear in all my life,” urged the woman. “I do not care if I never hear an oath read, for the land mourns because of oaths.” And then appealing to the jury she exclaims: “I was bred and born in this county and never have been at this assize before. I am a widow, and my estate is a dowry, and I have five children unpreferred.”
There was one device of oath-taking, half pagan and half barbaric, which but very slowly relaxed its hold on Christian Europe. We have spoken of the oath upon the sword—the oath of ancient Scythia, the oath of the Antigone of Euripedes. In the terrors of an isolated death, remote from all the outward appliances of his faith, the stricken warrior found consolation in raising before his vision the hilt of his scabbardless sword. The tapering metal-hafted blade threw the shadow of a cross upon the dying soldier, and to this rude emblem the poor fevered lips would stammer out their last words of petition. The sword had become a revered symbol conveying to the departing the hope of divine favour and intercession. This thought so powerfully arrested the imagination that it did not relinquish its grasp when a period of security had succeeded a reign of bloodshed and danger. In the traditions of Denmark, the