The Phantom World Part 23

[314] Vide Joan. Vier. de Curat. Malific. c. 215.

[315] Tob. viii.

CHAPTER x.x.xVII.

OTHER INSTANCES OF SPECTRES WHICH HAUNT CERTAIN HOUSES.

Father Pierre Thyree,[316] a Jesuit, relates an infinite number of anecdotes of houses haunted by ghosts, spirits, and demons; for instance, that of a tribune, named Hesperius, whose house was infested by a demon who tormented the domestics and animals, and who was driven away, says St. Augustin,[317] by a good priest of Hippo, who offered therein the divine sacrifice of the body of our Lord.

St. Germain,[318] Bishop of Capua, taking a bath in one particular quarter of the town, found there Paschaus, a deacon of the Roman Church, who had been dead some time, and who began to wait upon him, telling him that he underwent his purgatory in that place for having favored the party of Laurentius the anti-pope, against Pope Symachus.

St. Gregory of Nicea, in the life of St. Gregory of Neocaesarea, says that a deacon of this holy bishop, having gone into a bath where no one dared go after a certain hour in the evening, because all those who had entered there had been put to death, beheld spectres of all kinds, which threatened him in a thousand ways, but he got rid of them by crossing himself and invoking the name of Jesus.

Alexander ab Alexandro,[319] a learned Neapolitan lawyer of the fifteenth century, says that all the world knows that there are a number of houses at Rome so much out of repute on account of the ghosts which appear in them every night that n.o.body dares to inhabit them. Nicholas Tuba, his friend, a man well known for his probity and veracity, who came once with some of his comrades to try if all that was said of those houses was true, would pa.s.s the night in one of them with Alexander. As they were together, wide awake, and with plenty of light, they beheld a horrible spectre, which frightened them so much by its terrific voice and the great noise which it made, that they hardly knew what they did, nor what they said; "and by degrees, as we approached," says he, "with the light, the phantom retreated; at last, after having thrown all the house into confusion, it disappeared entirely."

I might also relate here the spectre noticed by Father Sinson the Jesuit, which he saw, and to which he spoke at Pont-a-Mousson, in the cloister belonging to those fathers; but I shall content myself with the instance which is reported in the _Causes Celebres_,[320] and which may serve to undeceive those who too lightly give credit to stories of this kind.

At the Chateau d' Arsillier, in Picardy, on certain days of the year, towards November, they saw flames and a horrible smoke proceeding thence. Cries and frightful howlings were heard. The bailiff, or farmer of the chateau, had got accustomed to this uproar, because he himself caused it. All the village talked of it, and everybody told his own story thereupon. The gentleman to whom the chateau belonged, mistrusting some contrivance, came there near All-saints' day with two gentlemen his friends, resolved to pursue the spirit, and fire upon it with a brace of good pistols. A few days after they arrived, they heard a great noise above the room where the owner of the chateau slept; his two friends went up thither, holding a pistol in one hand and a candle in the other; and a sort of black phantom with horns and a tail presented itself, and began to gambol about before them.

One of them fired off his pistol; the spectre, instead of falling, turns and skips before him: the gentleman tries to seize it, but the spirit escapes by the back staircase; the gentleman follows it, but loses sight of it, and after several turnings, the spectre throws itself into a granary, and disappears at the moment its pursuer reckoned on seizing and stopping it. A light was brought, and it was remarked that where the spectre had disappeared there was a trapdoor, which had been bolted after it entered; they forced open the trap, and found the pretended spirit. He owned all his artifices, and that what had rendered him proof against the pistol shot was buffalo's hide tightly fitted to his body.

Cardinal de Retz,[321] in his Memoirs, relates very agreeably the alarm which seized himself and those with him on meeting a company of black Augustine friars, who came to bathe in the river by night, and whom they took for a troop of quite another description.

A physician, in a dissertation which he has given on spirits or ghosts, says that a maid servant in the Rue St. Victor, who had gone down into the cellar, came back very much frightened, saying she had seen a spectre standing upright between two barrels. Some persons who were bolder went down, and saw the same thing. It was a dead body, which had fallen from a cart coming from the Hotel-Dieu. It had slid down by the cellar window (or grating), and had remained standing between two casks. All these collective facts, instead of confirming one another, and establishing the reality of those ghosts which appear in certain houses, and keep away those who would willingly dwell in them, are only calculated, on the contrary, to render such stories in general very doubtful; for on what account should those people who have been buried and turned to dust for a long time find themselves able to walk about with their chains? How do they drag them? How do they speak? What do they want? Is it sepulture? Are they not interred?

If they are heathens and reprobates, they have nothing to do with prayers. If they are good people, who died in a state of grace, they may require prayers to take them out of purgatory; but can that be said of the spectres spoken of by Pliny and Lucian? It is the devil, who sports with the simplicity of men? Is it not ascribing to him most excessive power, by making him the author of all these apparitions, which we conceive he cannot cause without the permission of G.o.d? And we can still less imagine that G.o.d will concur in the deceptions and illusions of the demon. There is then reason to believe that all the apparitions of this kind, and all these stories, are false, and must be absolutely rejected, as more fit to keep up the superst.i.tion and idle credulity of the people than to edify and instruct them.

Footnotes:

[316] Thyraei Demoniaci c.u.m locis infestis.

[317] S. Aug. de Civ. lib. xxii. 8.

[318] S. Greg. Mag. Dial. cap. 39.

[319] Alexander ab Alexandro, lib. v. 23.

[320] Causes Celebres, tom. xi. p. 374.

[321] Mem. de Cardinal de Retz, tom. i. pp. 43, 44

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII.

PRODIGIOUS EFFECTS OF IMAGINATION IN THOSE MEN OR WOMEN WHO BELIEVE THEY HOLD INTERCOURSE WITH THE DEMON.

As soon as we admit it as a principle that angels and demons are purely spiritual substances, we must consider, not only as chimerical but also as impossible, all personal intercourse between a demon and a man, or a woman, and consequently regard as the effect of a depraved or deranged imagination all that is related of demons, whether incubi or succubi, and of the _ephialtes_ of which such strange tales are told.

The author of the Book of Enoch, which is cited by the fathers, and regarded as canonical Scripture by some ancient writers, has taken occasion, from these words of Moses,[322] "The children of G.o.d, seeing the daughters of men, who were of extraordinary beauty, took them for wives, and begat the giants of them," of setting forth that the angels, smitten with love for the daughters of men, wedded them, and had by them children, which are those giants so famous in antiquity.[323] Some of the ancient fathers have thought that this irregular love of the angels was the cause of their fall, and that till then they had remained in the just and due subordination which they owed to their Creator.

It appears from Josephus that the Jews of his day seriously believed[324] that the angels were subject to these weaknesses like men. St. Justin Martyr[325] thought that the demons were the fruit of this commerce of the angels with the daughters of men.

But these ideas are now almost entirely given up, especially since the belief in the spirituality of angels and demons has been adopted.

Commentators and the fathers have generally explained the pa.s.sage in Genesis which we have quoted as relating to the children of Seth, to whom the Scripture gives the name of _children of G.o.d_, to distinguish them from the sons of Cain, who were the fathers of those here called _the daughters of men_. The race of Seth having then formed alliances with the race of Cain, by means of those marriages before alluded to, there proceeded from these unions powerful, violent, and impious men, who drew down upon the earth the terrible effects of G.o.d's wrath, which burst forth at the universal deluge.

Thus, then, these marriages between the _children of G.o.d_ and the _daughters of men_ have no relation to the question we are here treating; what we have to examine is--if the demon can have personal commerce with man or woman, and if what is said on that subject can be connected with the apparitions of evil spirits amongst mankind, which is the princ.i.p.al object of this dissertation.

I will give some instances of those persons who have believed that they held such intercourse with the demon. Torquemada relates, in a detailed manner, what happened in his time, and to his knowledge, in the town of Cagliari, in Sardinia, to a young lady, who suffered herself to be corrupted by the demon; and having been arrested by the Inquisition, she suffered the penalty of the flames, in the mad hope that her pretended lover would come and deliver her.

In the same place he speaks of a young girl who was sought in marriage by a gentleman of good family; when the devil a.s.sumed the form of this young man, a.s.sociated with the young lady for several months, made her promises of marriage, and took advantage of her. She was only undeceived when the young lord who sought her in marriage informed her that he was absent from town, and more than fifty leagues off, the day that the promise in question had been given, and that he never had the slightest knowledge of it. The young girl, thus disabused, retired into a convent, and did penance for her double crime.

We read in the life of St. Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux,[326] that a woman of Nantes, in Brittany, saw, or thought she saw the demon every night, even when lying by her husband. She remained six years in this state; at the end of that period, having her disorderly life in horror, she confessed herself to a priest, and by his advice began to perform several acts of piety, as much to obtain pardon for her crime as to deliver herself from her abominable lover. But when the husband of this woman was informed of the circ.u.mstance, he left her, and would never see her again.

This unhappy woman was informed by the devil himself that St. Bernard would soon come to Nantes, but she must mind not to speak to him, for this abbot could by no means a.s.sist her; and if she did speak to him, it would be a great misfortune to her; and that from being her lover, he who warned her of it would become her most ardent persecutor.

The saint rea.s.sured this woman, and desired her to make the sign of the cross on herself on going to bed, and to place next her in the bed the staff which he gave her. "If the demon comes," said he, "let him do what he can." The demon came; but, without daring to approach the bed, he threatened the woman greatly, and told her that after the departure of St. Bernard he would come again to torment her.

On the following Sunday, St. Bernard repaired to the Cathedral church, with the Bishop of Nantes and the Bishop of Chartres, and having caused lighted tapers to be given to all the people, who had a.s.sembled in a great crowd, the saint, after having publicly related the abominable action of the demon, exorcised and anathematized the evil spirit, and forbade him, by the authority of Jesus Christ, ever again to approach that woman, or any other. Everybody extinguished their tapers, and the power of the demon was annihilated.

This example and the two preceding ones, related in so circ.u.mstantial a manner, might make us believe that there is some reality in what is said of demons incubi and succubi; but if we deeply examine the facts, we shall find that an imagination strongly possessed, and violent prejudice, may produce all that we have just repeated.

St. Bernard begins by curing the woman's mind, by giving her a stick, which she was to place by her side in the bed. This staff sufficed for the first impression; but to dispose her for a complete cure, he exorcises the demon, and then anathematizes him, with all the _eclat_ he possibly could: the bishops are a.s.sembled in the cathedral, the people repair thither in crowds; the circ.u.mstance is recounted in pompous terms; the evil spirit is threatened; the tapers are extinguished--all of them striking ceremonies: the woman is moved by them, and her imagination is restored to a healthy tone.

Jerome Cardan[327] relates two singular examples of the power of imagination in this way; he had them from Francis Pico de Mirandola.

"I know," says the latter, "a priest, seventy-five years of age, who lived with a pretended woman, whom he called Hermeline, with whom he slept, conversed, and conducted in the streets as if she had been his wife. He alone saw her, or thought he saw her, so that he was looked upon as a man who had lost his senses. This priest was named Benedict Bena. He had been arrested by the Inquisition, and punished for his crimes; for he owned that in the sacrifice of the ma.s.s he did not p.r.o.nounce the sacramental words, that he had given the consecrated wafer to women to make use of in sorcery, and that he had sucked the blood of children. He avowed all this while undergoing the question.

Another, named Pineto, held converse with a demon, whom he kept as his wife, and with whom he had intercourse for more than forty years. This man was still living in the time of Pico de Mirandola.

Devotion and spirituality, when too contracted and carried to excess, have also their derangements of imagination. Persons so affected often believe they see, hear, and feel, what pa.s.ses only in their brain, and which takes all its reality from their prejudices and self-love. This is less mistrusted, because the object of it is holy and pious; but error and excess, even in matters of devotion, are subject to very great inconveniences, and it is very important to undeceive all those who give way to this kind of mental derangement.

For instance, we have seen persons eminent for their devotion, who believed they saw the Holy Virgin, St. Joseph, the Saviour, and their guardian angel, who spoke to them, conversed with them, touched the wounds of the Lord, and tasted the blood which flowed from his side and his wounds. Others thought they were in company with the Holy Virgin and the Infant Jesus, who spoke to them and conversed with them; in idea, however, and without reality.

In order to cure the two ecclesiastics of whom we have spoken, gentler and perhaps more efficacious means might have been made use of than those employed by the tribunal of the Inquisition. Every day hypochondriacs, or maniacs, with fevered imaginations, diseased brains, or with the viscera too much heated, are cured by simple and natural remedies, either by cooling the blood, and creating a diversion in the humors thereof, or by striking the imagination through some new device, or by giving so much exercise of body and mind to those who are afflicted with such maladies of the brain that they may have something else to do or to think of, than to nourish such fancies, and strengthen them by reflections daily recurring, and having always the same end and object.

Footnotes:

[322] Gen. vi. 1, 2.

[323] Athenagorus and Clem. Alex. lib. iii. & v. Strom. & lib. ii.

Pedagog.