History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom Part 49

(327) For the case of Eufame Macalyane, se Dalyell, Darker Superst.i.tions of Scotland, pp. 130, 133. For the contest of Simpson with Scotch ecclesiatical authorities, see Duns, Life of Sir J. Y. Simpson, London, 1873, pp. 215-222, and 256-260.

XI. FINAL BREAKING AWAY OF THE THEOLOGICAL THEORY IN MEDICINE.

While this development of history was going on, the central idea on which the whole theologic view rested--the idea of diseases as resulting from the wrath of G.o.d or malice of Satan--was steadily weakened; and, out of the many things which show this, one may be selected as indicating the drift of thought among theologians themselves.

Toward the end of the eighteenth century the most eminent divines of the American branch of the Anglican Church framed their Book of Common Prayer. Abounding as it does in evidences of their wisdom and piety, few things are more noteworthy than a change made in the exhortation to the faithful to present themselves at the communion. While, in the old form laid down in the English Prayer Book, the minister was required to warn his flock not "to kindle G.o.d's wrath" or "provoke him to plague us with divers diseases and sundry kinds of death," from the American form all this and more of similar import in various services was left out.

Since that day progress in medical science has been rapid indeed, and at no period more so than during the last half of the nineteenth century.

The theological view of disease has steadily faded, and the theological hold upon medical education has been almost entirely relaxed. In three great fields, especially, discoveries have been made which have done much to disperse the atmosphere of miracle. First, there has come knowledge regarding the relation between imagination and medicine, which, though still defective, is of great importance. This relation has been noted during the whole history of the science. When the soldiers of the Prince of Orange, at the siege of Breda in 1625, were dying of scurvy by scores, he sent to the physicians "two or three small vials filled with a decoction of camomile, wormwood, and camphor, gave out that it was a very rare and precious medicine--a medicine of such virtue that two or three drops sufficed to impregnate a gallon of water, and that it had been obtained from the East with great difficulty and danger." This statement, made with much solemnity, deeply impressed the soldiers; they took the medicine eagerly, and great numbers recovered rapidly. Again, two centuries later, young Humphry Davy, being employed to apply the bulb of the thermometer to the tongues of certain patients at Bristol after they had inhaled various gases as remedies for disease, and finding that the patients supposed this application of the thermometer-bulb was the cure, finally wrought cures by this application alone, without any use of the gases whatever. Innumerable cases of this sort have thrown a flood of light upon such cures as those wrought by Prince Hohenlohe, by the "metallic tractors," and by a mult.i.tude of other agencies temporarily in vogue, but, above all, upon the miraculous cures which in past ages have been so frequent and of which a few survive.

The second department is that of hypnotism. Within the last half-century many scattered indications have been collected and supplemented by thoughtful, patient investigators of genius, and especially by Braid in England and Charcot in France. Here, too, great inroads have been made upon the province hitherto sacred to miracle, and in 1888 the cathedral preacher, Steigenberger, of Augsburg, sounded an alarm. He declared his fears "lest accredited Church miracles lose their hold upon the public,"

denounced hypnotism as a doctrine of demons, and ended with the singular argument that, inasmuch as hypnotism is avowedly incapable of explaining all the wonders of history, it is idle to consider it at all. But investigations in hypnotism still go on, and may do much in the twentieth century to carry the world yet further from the realm of the miraculous.

In a third field science has won a striking series of victories.

Bacteriology, beginning in the researches of Leeuwenhoek in the seventeenth century, continued by O. F. Muller in the eighteenth, and developed or applied with wonderful skill by Ehrenberg, Cohn, Lister, Pasteur, Koch, Billings, Bering, and their compeers in the nineteenth, has explained the origin and proposed the prevention or cure of various diseases widely prevailing, which until recently have been generally held to be "inscrutable providences." Finally, the closer study of psychology, especially in its relations to folklore, has revealed processes involved in the development of myths and legends: the phenomena of "expectant attention," the tendency to marvel-mongering, and the feeling of "joy in believing."

In summing up the history of this long struggle between science and theology, two main facts are to be noted: First, that in proportion as the world approached the "ages of faith" it receded from ascertained truth, and in proportion as the world has receded from the "ages of faith" it has approached ascertained truth; secondly, that, in proportion as the grasp of theology Upon education tightened, medicine declined, and in proportion as that grasp has relaxed, medicine has been developed.

The world is hardly beyond the beginning of medical discoveries, yet they have already taken from theology what was formerly its strongest province--sweeping away from this vast field of human effort that belief in miracles which for more than twenty centuries has been the main stumbling-block in the path of medicine; and in doing this they have cleared higher paths not only for science, but for religion.(328)

(328) For the rescue of medical education from the control of theology, especially in France, see Rambaud, La Civilisation Contemporaine en France, pp. 682, 683. For miraculous cures wrought by imagination, see Tuke, Influence of Mind on Body, vol. ii. For opposition to the scientific study of hypnotism, see Hypnotismus und Wunder: ein Vortrag, mit Weiterungen, von Max Steigenberger, Domprediger, Augsburg, 1888, reviewed in Science, Feb. 15, 1889, p. 127. For a recent statement regarding the development of studies in hypnotism, see Liegeois, De la Suggestion et du Somnambulisme dans leurs rapports avec la Jurisprudence, Paris, 1889, chap. ii. As to joy in believing and exaggerating marvels, see in the London Graphic for January 2, 1892, an account of Hindu jugglers by "Professor" Hofmann, himself an expert conjurer. He shows that the Hindu performances have been grossly and persistently exaggerated in the accounts of travellers; that they are easily seen through, and greatly inferior to the jugglers' tricks seen every day in European capitals. The eminent Prof. De Gubernatis, who also had witnessed the Hindu performances, a.s.sured the present writer that the current accounts of them were monstrously exaggerated. As to the miraculous in general, the famous Essay of Hume holds a most important place in the older literature of the subject; but, for perhaps the most remarkable of all discussions of it, see Conyers Middleton, D.

D., A Free Inquiry into the Miraculous Powers which are supposed to have subsisted in the Christian Church, London, 1749. For probably the most judicially fair discussion, see Lecky, History of European Morals, vol.

i, chap. iii; also his Rationalism in Europe, vol. i, chaps. i and ii; and for perhaps the boldest and most suggestive of recent statements, see Max Muller, Physical Religion, being the Gifford Lectures before the University of Glasgow for 1890, London, 1891, lecture xiv. See also, for very cogent statements and arguments, Matthew Arnold's Literature and Dogma, especially chap. v, and, for a recent utterance of great clearness and force, Prof. Osler's Address before the Johns Hopkins University, given in Science for March 27, 1891.

CHAPTER XIV. FROM FETICH TO HYGIENE.

I. THE THEOLOGICAL VIEW OF EPIDEMICS AND SANITATION.

A very striking feature in recorded history has been the recurrence of great pestilences. Various indications in ancient times show their frequency, while the famous description of the plague of Athens given by Thucydides, and the discussion of it by Lucretius, exemplify their severity. In the Middle Ages they raged from time to time throughout Europe: such plagues as the Black Death and the sweating sickness swept off vast mult.i.tudes, the best authorities estimating that of the former, at the middle of the fourteenth century, more than half the population of England died, and that twenty-five millions of people perished in various parts of Europe. In 1552 sixty-seven thousand patients died of the plague at Paris alone, and in 1580 more than twenty thousand. The great plague in England and other parts of Europe in the seventeenth century was also fearful, and that which swept the south of Europe in the early part of the eighteenth century, as well as the invasions by the cholera at various times during the nineteenth, while less terrible than those of former years, have left a deep impress upon the imaginations of men.

From the earliest records we find such pestilences attributed to the wrath or malice of unseen powers. This had been the prevailing view even in the most cultured ages before the establishment of Christianity: in Greece and Rome especially, plagues of various sorts were attributed to the wrath of the G.o.ds; in Judea, the scriptural records of various plagues sent upon the earth by the Divine fiat as a punishment for sin show the continuance of this mode of thought. Among many examples and intimations of this in our sacred literature, we have the epidemic which carried off fourteen thousand seven hundred of the children of Israel, and which was only stayed by the prayers and offerings of Aaron, the high priest; the destruction of seventy thousand men in the pestilence by which King David was punished for the numbering of Israel, and which was only stopped when the wrath of Jahveh was averted by burnt-offerings; the plague threatened by the prophet Zechariah, and that delineated in the Apocalypse. From these sources this current of ideas was poured into the early Christian Church, and hence it has been that during nearly twenty centuries since the rise of Christianity, and down to a period within living memory, at the appearance of any pestilence the Church authorities, instead of devising sanitary measures, have very generally preached the necessity of immediate atonement for offences against the Almighty.

This view of the early Church was enriched greatly by a new development of theological thought regarding the powers of Satan and evil angels, the declaration of St. Paul that the G.o.ds of antiquity were devils being cited as its sufficient warrant.(329)

(329) For plague during the Peloponnesian war, see Thucydides, vol. ii, pp.47-55, and vol. iii, p. 87. For a general statement regarding this and other plagues in ancient times, see Lucretius, vol. vi, pp. 1090 et seq.; and for a translation, see vol. i, p. 179, in Munro's edition of 1886. For early views of sanitary science in Greece and Rome, see Forster's Inquiry, in The Pamphleteer, vol. xxiv, p. 404. For the Greek view of the interference of the G.o.ds in disease, especially in pestilence, see Grote's History of Greece, vol. i, pp. 251, 485, and vol. vi, p. 213; see also Herodotus, lib. iii, c. x.x.xviii, and elsewhere. For the Hebrew view of the same interference by the Almighty, see especially Numbers xi, 4-34; also xvi, 49; I Samuel xxiv; also Psalm cvi, 29; also the well-known texts in Zechariah and Revelation. For St.

Paul's declaration that the G.o.ds of the heathen are devils, see I Cor.

x, 20. As to the earlier origin of the plague in Egypt, see Haeser, 'Lehrbuch der Geschichte der Medicin und der epidemischen Krankheiten, Jena, 1875-'82, vol. iii, pp. 15 et seq.

Moreover, comets, falling stars, and earthquakes were thought, upon scriptural authority, to be "signs and wonders"--evidences of the Divine wrath, heralds of fearful visitations; and this belief, acting powerfully upon the minds of millions, did much to create a panic-terror sure to increase epidemic disease wherever it broke forth.

The main cause of this immense sacrifice of life is now known to have been the want of hygienic precaution, both in the Eastern centres, where various plagues were developed, and in the European towns through which they spread. And here certain theological reasonings came in to resist the evolution of a proper sanitary theory. Out of the Orient had been poured into the thinking of western Europe the theological idea that the abas.e.m.e.nt of man adds to the glory of G.o.d; that indignity to the body may secure salvation to the soul; hence, that cleanliness betokens pride and filthiness humility. Living in filth was regarded by great numbers of holy men, who set an example to the Church and to society, as an evidence of sanct.i.ty. St. Jerome and the Breviary of the Roman Church dwell with unction on the fact that St. Hilarion lived his whole life long in utter physical uncleanliness; St. Athanasius glorifies St.

Anthony because he had never washed his feet; St. Abraham's most striking evidence of holiness was that for fifty years he washed neither his hands nor his feet; St. Sylvia never washed any part of her body save her fingers; St. Euphraxia belonged to a convent in which the nuns religiously abstained from bathing. St. Mary of Egypt was eminent for filthiness; St. Simnon Stylites was in this respect unspeakable--the least that can be said is, that he lived in ordure and stench intolerable to his visitors. The Lives of the Saints dwell with complacency on the statement that, when sundry Eastern monks showed a disposition to wash themselves, the Almighty manifested his displeasure by drying up a neighbouring stream until the bath which it had supplied was destroyed.

The religious world was far indeed from the inspired utterance attributed to John Wesley, that "cleanliness is near akin to G.o.dliness."

For century after century the idea prevailed that filthiness was akin to holiness; and, while we may well believe that the devotion of the clergy to the sick was one cause why, during the greater plagues, they lost so large a proportion of their numbers, we can not escape the conclusion that their want of cleanliness had much to do with it. In France, during the fourteenth century, Guy de Chauliac, the great physician of his time, noted particularly that certain Carmelite monks suffered especially from pestilence, and that they were especially filthy. During the Black Death no less than nine hundred Carthusian monks fell victims in one group of buildings.

Naturally, such an example set by the venerated leaders of thought exercised great influence throughout society, and all the more because it justified the carelessness and sloth to which ordinary humanity is p.r.o.ne. In the princ.i.p.al towns of Europe, as well as in the country at large, down to a recent period, the most ordinary sanitary precautions were neglected, and pestilences continued to be attributed to the wrath of G.o.d or the malice of Satan. As to the wrath of G.o.d, a new and powerful impulse was given to this belief in the Church toward the end of the sixth century by St. Gregory the Great. In 590, when he was elected Pope, the city of Rome was suffering from a dreadful pestilence: the people were dying by thousands; out of one procession imploring the mercy of Heaven no less than eighty persons died within an hour: what the heathen in an earlier epoch had attributed to Apollo was now attributed to Jehovah, and chroniclers tell us that fiery darts were seen flung from heaven into the devoted city. But finally, in the midst of all this horror, Gregory, at the head of a penitential procession, saw hovering over the mausoleum of Hadrian the figure of the archangel Michael, who was just sheathing a flaming sword, while three angels were heard chanting the Regina Coeli. The legend continues that the Pope immediately broke forth into hallelujahs for this sign that the plague was stayed, and, as it shortly afterward became less severe, a chapel was built at the summit of the mausoleum and dedicated to St. Michael; still later, above the whole was erected the colossal statue of the archangel sheathing his sword, which still stands to perpetuate the legend. Thus the greatest of Rome's ancient funeral monuments was made to bear testimony to this medieval belief; the mausoleum of Hadrian became the castle of St. Angelo. A legend like this, claiming to date from the greatest of the early popes, and vouched for by such an imposing monument, had undoubtedly a marked effect upon the dominant theology throughout Europe, which was constantly developing a great body of thought regarding the agencies by which the Divine wrath might be averted.

First among these agencies, naturally, were evidences of devotion, especially gifts of land, money, or privileges to churches, monasteries, and shrines--the seats of fetiches which it was supposed had wrought cures or might work them. The whole evolution of modern history, not only ecclesiastical but civil, has been largely affected by the wealth transferred to the clergy at such periods. It was noted that in the fourteenth century, after the great plague, the Black Death, had pa.s.sed, an immensely increased proportion of the landed and personal property of every European country was in the hands of the Church. Well did a great ecclesiastic remark that "pestilences are the harvests of the ministers of G.o.d."(330)

(330) For triumphant mention of St. Hilarion's filth, see the Roman Breviary for October 21st; and for details, see S. Hieronymus, Vita S.

Hilarionis Eremitae, in Migne, Patrologia, vol. xxiii. For Athanasius's reference to St. Anthony's filth, see works of St. Athanasius in the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, second series, vol. iv, p. 209. For the filthiness of the other saints named, see citations from the Lives of the Saints, in Lecky's History of European Morals, vol. ii, pp. 117, 118. For Guy de Chauliac's observation on the filthiness of Carmelite monks and their great losses by pestilence, see Meryon, History of Medicine, vol. i, p. 257. For the mortality among the Carthusian monks in time of plague, see Mrs. Lecky's very interesting Visit to the Grand Chartreuse, in The Nineteenth Century for March, 1891. For the plague at Rome in 590, the legend regarding the fiery darts, mentioned by Pope Gregory himself, and that of the castle of St. Angelo, see Gregorovius, Geschichte der Stadt Rom im Mittelalter, vol. ii, pp. 26-35; also Story, Castle of St. Angelo, etc., chap. ii. For the remark that "pestilences are the harvest of the ministers of G.o.d," see reference to Charlevoix, in Southey, History of Brazil, vol. ii, p. 254, cited in Buckle, vol. i, p. 130, note.

Other modes of propitiating the higher powers were penitential processions, the parading of images of the Virgin or of saints through plague-stricken towns, and fetiches innumerable. Very noted in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were the processions of the flagellants, trooping through various parts of Europe, scourging their naked bodies, shrieking the penitential psalms, and often running from wild excesses of devotion to the maddest orgies.

Sometimes, too, plagues were attributed to the wrath of lesser heavenly powers. Just as, in former times, the fury of "far-darting Apollo" was felt when his name was not respectfully treated by mortals, so, in 1680, the Church authorities at Rome discovered that the plague then raging resulted from the anger of St. Sebastian because no monument had been erected to him. Such a monument was therefore placed in the Church of St. Peter ad Vincula, and the plague ceased.

So much for the endeavour to avert the wrath of the heavenly powers.

On the other hand, theological reasoning no less subtle was used in thwarting the malice of Satan. This idea, too, came from far. In the sacred books of India and Persia, as well as in our own, we find the same theory of disease, leading to similar means of cure. Perhaps the most astounding among Christian survivals of this theory and its resultant practices was seen during the plague at Rome in 1522. In that year, at that centre of divine illumination, certain people, having reasoned upon the matter, came to the conclusion that this great scourge was the result of Satanic malice; and, in view of St. Paul's declaration that the ancient G.o.ds were devils, and of the theory that the ancient G.o.ds of Rome were the devils who had the most reason to punish that city for their dethronement, and that the great amphitheatre was the chosen haunt of these demon G.o.ds, an ox decorated with garlands, after the ancient heathen manner, was taken in procession to the Colosseum and solemnly sacrificed. Even this proved vain, and the Church authorities then ordered expiatory processions and ceremonies to propitiate the Almighty, the Virgin, and the saints, who had been offended by this temporary effort to bribe their enemies.

But this sort of theological reasoning developed an idea far more disastrous, and this was that Satan, in causing pestilences, used as his emissaries especially Jews and witches. The proof of this belief in the case of the Jews was seen in the fact that they escaped with a less percentage of disease than did the Christians in the great plague periods. This was doubtless due in some measure to their remarkable sanitary system, which had probably originated thousands of years before in Egypt, and had been handed down through Jewish lawgivers and statesmen. Certainly they observed more careful sanitary rules and more constant abstinence from dangerous foods than was usual among Christians; but the public at large could not understand so simple a cause, and jumped to the conclusion that their immunity resulted from protection by Satan, and that this protection was repaid and the pestilence caused by their wholesale poisoning of Christians. As a result of this mode of thought, attempts were made in all parts of Europe to propitiate the Almighty, to thwart Satan, and to stop the plague by torturing and murdering the Jews. Throughout Europe during great pestilences we hear of extensive burnings of this devoted people.

In Bavaria, at the time of the Black Death, it is computed that twelve thousand Jews thus perished; in the small town of Erfurt the number is said to have been three thousand; in Strasburg, the Rue Brulee remains as a monument to the two thousand Jews burned there for poisoning the wells and causing the plague of 1348; at the royal castle of Chinon, near Tours, an immense trench was dug, filled with blazing wood, and in a single day one hundred and sixty Jews were burned. Everywhere in continental Europe this mad persecution went on; but it is a pleasure to say that one great churchman, Pope Clement VI, stood against this popular unreason, and, so far as he could bring his influence to bear on the maddened populace, exercised it in favour of mercy to these supposed enemies of the Almighty.(331)

(331) For an early conception in India of the Divinity acting through medicine, see The Bhagavadgita, translated by Telang, p. 82, in Max Muller's Sacred Books of the East. For the necessity of religious means of securing knowledge of medicine, see the Anugita, translated by Telang, in Max Muller's Sacred Books of the East, p. 388. For ancient Persian ideas of sickness as sent by the spirit of evil and to be cured by spells, but not excluding medicine and surgery, and for sickness generally as caused by the evil principle in demons, see the Zend-Avesta, Darmesteter's translation, introduction, pa.s.sim, but especially p. xciii. For diseases wrought by witchcraft, see the same, pp. 230, 293. On the preferences of spells in healing over medicine and surgery, see Zend-Avesta, vol. i, pp. 85, 86. For healing by magic in ancient Greece, see, e. g., the cure of Ulysses in the Odyssey, "They stopped the black blood by a spell" (Odyssey, xxix, 457). For medicine in Egypt as partly priestly and partly in the hands of physicians, see Rawlinson's Herodotus, vol. ii, p. 136, note. For ideas of curing of disease by expulsion of demons still surviving among various tribes and nations of Asia, see J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough: a Study of Comparative Religion, London, 1890, pp. 184-192. For the Flagellants and their processions at the time of the Black Death, see Lea, History of the Inquisition, New York, 1888, vol. ii, pp. 381 et seq. For the persecution of the Jews in time of pestilence, see ibid., p. 379 and following, with authorities in the notes. For the expulsion of the Jews from Padua, see the Acta Sanctorum, September, tom. viii, p. 893.

Yet, as late as 1527, the people of Pavia, being threatened with plague, appealed to St. Bernardino of Feltro, who during his life had been a fierce enemy of the Jews, and they pa.s.sed a decree promising that if the saint would avert the pestilence they would expel the Jews from the city. The saint apparently accepted the bargain, and in due time the Jews were expelled.

As to witches, the reasons for believing them the cause of pestilence also came from far. This belief, too, had been poured mainly from Oriental sources into our sacred books and thence into the early Church, and was strengthened by a whole line of Church authorities, fathers, doctors, and saints; but, above all, by the great bull, Summis Desiderantes, issued by Pope Innocent VIII, in 1484. This utterance from the seat of St. Peter infallibly committed the Church to the idea that witches are a great cause of disease, storms, and various ills which afflict humanity; and the Scripture on which the action recommended against witches in this papal bull, as well as in so many sermons and treatises for centuries afterward, was based, was the famous text, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." This idea persisted long, and the evolution of it is among the most fearful things in human history.(332)

(332) On the plagues generally, see Hecker, Epidemics of the Middle Ages, pa.s.sim; but especially Haeser, as above, III. Band, pp. 1-202; also Sprengel, Baas, Isensee, et al. For brief statement showing the enormous loss of life in these plagues, see Littre, Medecine et Medecins, Paris, 1875, pp. 3 et seq. For a summary of the effects of the Black Plague throughout England, see Green's Short History of the English People, chap. v. For the mortality in the Paris hospitals, see Desmazes, Supplices, Prisons et Graces en France, Paris 1866. For striking descriptions of plague-stricken cities, see the well-known pa.s.sages in Thucydides, Boccaccio, De Foe, and, above all, Manzoni's Promessi Sposi. For examples of averting the plagues by processions, see Leopold Delisle, Etudes sur la Condition de la Cla.s.se Agricole, etc., en Normandie au Moyen Age, p. 630; also Fort, chap. xxiii. For the anger of St. Sebastian as a cause of the plague at Rome, and its cessation when a monument had been erected to him, see Paulus Diaconus, cited in Gregorovius, vol. ii. p. 165. For the sacrifice of an ox in the Colosseum to the ancient G.o.ds as a means of averting the plague of 1522, at Rome, see Gregorovius, vol. viii, p. 390. As to ma.s.sacres of the Jews in order to avert the wrath of G.o.d in pestilence, see L'Ecole et la Science, Paris, 1887, p. 178; also Hecker, and especially Hoeniger, Gang und Verbreitung des Schwarzen Todes in Deutschalnd, Berlin, 1889. For a long list of towns in which burnings of Jews took place for this imaginary cause, see pp. 7-11. As to absolute want of sanitary precautions, see Hecker, p. 292. As to condemnation by strong religionists of medical means in the plague, see Fort, p. 130. For a detailed account of the action of Popes Eugene IV, Innocent VIII, and other popes, against witchcraft, ascribing to it storms and diseases, and for the bull Summis Desiderantes, see the chapters on Meteorology and Magic in this series. The text of the bull is given in the Malleus Maleficarum, in Binsfield, and in Roskoff, Geschichte des Teufels, Leipzig, 1869, vol. i, pp. 222-225, and a good summary and a.n.a.lysis of it in Soldan, Geschichte der Hexenprocesse. For a concise and admirable statement of the contents and effects of the bull, see Lea, History of the Inquisition, vol. iii, pp. 40 et seq.; and for the best statement known to me of the general subject, Prof. George L. Burr's paper on The Literature of Witchcraft, read before the American Historical a.s.sociation at Washington, 1890.

In Germany its development was especially terrible. From the middle of the sixteenth century to the middle of the seventeenth, Catholic and Protestant theologians and ecclesiastics vied with each other in detecting witches guilty of producing sickness or bad weather; women were sent to torture and death by thousands, and with them, from time to time, men and children. On the Catholic side sufficient warrant for this work was found in the bull of Pope Innocent VIII, and the bishops'

palaces of south Germany became shambles,--the lordly prelates of Salzburg, Wurzburg, and Bamberg taking the lead in this butchery.

In north Germany Protestantism was just as conscientiously cruel. It based its theory and practice toward witches directly upon the Bible, and above all on the great text which has cost the lives of so many myriads of innocent men, women, and children, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." Naturally the Protestant authorities strove to show that Protestantism was no less orthodox in this respect than Catholicism; and such theological jurists as Carpzov, Damhouder, and Calov did their work thoroughly. An eminent authority on this subject estimates the number of victims thus sacrificed during that century in Germany alone at over a hundred thousand.