Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing Part 3

We are told that in the reign of Philip II of Spain a famous Spanish doctor was actually condemned by the Inquisition to be burnt for having performed a surgical operation, and it was only by royal favor that he was permitted instead to expiate his crime by a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, where he died in poverty and exile.

This restriction was continued for three centuries, and consequently threw medical work into the hands of charlatans among Christians, and of Jews. The clergy of the city of Hall protested that "it were better to die with Christ than to be cured by a Jew doctor aided by the devil." The Jesuit professor, Stengal, said that G.o.d permits illness because of His wish to glorify Himself through the miracles wrought by the church, and His desire to test the faith of men by letting them choose between the holy aid of the church and the illicit resort to medicine.

There was another reason for the antagonism of the church to physicians; the physicians in this case were inside the church. The monks converted medicine to the basest uses. In connection with the authority of the church, it was employed for extorting money from the sick. They knew little or nothing about medicine, so used charms, amulets, and relics in healing. The ignorance and cupidity of the monks led the Lateran Council, under the pontificate of Calixtus II, in 1123, to forbid priests and monks to attend the sick otherwise than as ministers of religion. It had little or no effect, so that Innocent II, in a council at Rheims in 1131, enforced the decree prohibiting the monks frequenting schools of medicine, and directing them to confine their practice to their own monasteries. They still disobeyed, and a Lateran Council in 1139 threatened all who neglected its orders with the severest penalties and suspension from the exercise of all ecclesiastical functions; such practices were denounced as a neglect of the sacred objects of their profession in exchange for unG.o.dly lucre. When the priests found that they could no longer confine the practice of medicine to themselves, it was stigmatized and denounced.

At the Council of Tours in 1163, Alexander III maintained that through medicine the devil tried to seduce the priesthood, and threatened with excommunication any ecclesiastic who studied medicine. In 1215, Innocent III fulminated an anathema against surgery and any priest practising it. Even this was not effectual.[17]

What we see in connection with dissection and surgery and medicine was repeated at a later date with inoculation, vaccination, and anaesthetics. There were the same objections by the church on theological grounds, the same stubborn battle, and the same inevitable defeat of the theological position.

So long as disease was attributed to a demoniacal cause, so long did exorcisms and other miraculous cures continue, and so far as these cures were efficacious, they must be cla.s.sed as mental healing.

Probably they continued longer in insanity and mental derangement on account of the beneficent and soothing effect of religion upon a diseased mind. Priestly cures of all kinds were largely, if not wholly, suggestive, and no history of mental healing would be complete without a resume of ecclesiastical therapeutics. Many vagaries of healing which the church introduced might be mentioned to show to what extent the people may be misled in the name of religion. For example, the doctrine of signatures, to be later discussed, was disseminated by priests and monks, and if these medicines were ever effective it must have been by mental means.

The demon theory of disease, which began before the age of history, and continued down through the savage ages and religions, through the early civilizations, through the gospel history, and dominated early Christianity, was finally, in the sixteenth century, to be vigorously a.s.sailed and largely overcome. The cost of this was considerable; attached as it was to the Christian church, it seemed necessary to destroy the whole Christian fabric in order to unravel this one thread. Atheism, therefore, was rampant, and science and atheism became almost synonymous, and continued so until the church freed science from its centuries of bondage and allowed it to develop so as to be again in these days a co-laborer.

In pleasing contrast to the destructive and deterrent efforts of the church against the development of medicine is the helpful care of the sick exercised by Christians. The example of Jesus as shown by his tender sympathy, his helpful acts, and his instruction to his followers, bore fruit in the relief and care of sufferers by individuals and religious asylums. About the year 1000 and later, the infirmaries which were attached to numerous monasteries, and the _hospitia_ along the routes of travel which opened their doors to sick pilgrims, were but the development of a less portentous attempt on the part of individuals and societies to care for the sick. The Knights of St. John, or the Hospitalers as they were called, a.s.sumed as their special duty the nursing and doctoring of those in need of such attention, especially of sick and infirm pilgrims and crusaders.

Hospitals for the sick, orphanages for foundlings, and great inst.i.tutions for the proper care of paupers developed with immense strides, and during the twelfth century expanded into gigantic proportions. In the ensuing age, the mediaeval mind was fired with a faith in the efficacy of unstinted charity; members of society, from holy pontiff to the humblest recluse by the wayside, rivalled each other in gratuities of clothing and food, founding of hospitals, and endowment of beneficent public inst.i.tutions. St. Louis's highest claim to pious glory arose from his restless and unstinted charities to the indigent and sick. Even the lepers, which were shunned or segregated, were treated by Christian inst.i.tutions; and saints and saintesses found pious expression for their humility in personal attendance and even loving embraces of these unsightly beings covered with repulsive sores. For the last millennium there has not been a time when Christian love and benevolence have not sought the opportunity of ministering to the sick.

One can easily recognize the effect which this fact would have on mental healing. The church fostered the ideas of exorcism and the cures by relics and shrines, and deprecated the use of medicine. If the hospitals and infirmaries were almost wholly in the hands of the monks and churchmen, there was little hope for the development of other than ecclesiastical mental healing. The untold good which Christian ministrations to the sick accomplished must be acknowledged, but it was not an unmixed benefit to the race as a whole.

We may more easily see, perhaps, the connection between the church and the development of medicine, and the despotic power of the church in this regard, when we remember that physicians were formerly a part of the clergy, and it was not until 1542 that the papal legate in France gave them permission to marry. In 1552 the doctors in law obtained like permission. An early priestly physician has survived to fame by the name of Elpideus, sometimes confused with Elpidius Rusticus. He was both a deacon of the church and a skilled surgeon, and was very favorably mentioned by St. Ennodius as a person of fine culture. He was sufficiently dexterous and skilful to heal the Gothic ruler, Theodoric, of a grievous illness.[18] Salverte gives us additional examples: "Richard Fitz-Nigel, who died Bishop of London, in 1198, had been apothecary to Henry II. The celebrated Roger Bacon, who flourished in the thirteenth century, although a monk, yet practised medicine. Nicolas de Farnham, a physician to Henry III, was created Bishop of Durham; and many doctors of medicine were at various times elevated to ecclesiastical dignities."[19]

The grip of the church accomplished its purpose, and science, especially the science of medicine, was strangled, almost to the death. Even the people of the time recognized the shortcomings of the physicians. Henricus Cornelius Agrippa (1486-1535), writing in 1530, said with pleasant irony that physic was "a certaine Arte of manslaughter," and that "well neare alwaies there is more daunger in the Physition and the Medicine than in the sicknesse itselfe." He also gives the following picture of a fashionable doctor of his time: "Clad in brave apparaile, having ringes on his fingers glimmeringe with pretious stoanes, and which hath gotten fame and credence for having been in farre countries, or having an obstinate manner of vaunting with stiffe lies that he hath great remedies, and for having continually in his mouth many wordes halfe Greeke and barbarous....

But this will prove to be true, that Physitians moste commonlye be naught. They have one common honour with the hangman, that is to saye, to kill menne and to be recompensed therefore."[20]

[3] A. D. White, _History of the Warfare of Science with Theology_, II, p. 113.

[4] E. Salverte, _Philosophy of Magic_ (trans.

Thompson), II, p. 94.

[5] W. E. H. Lecky, _History of European Morals_, I, p.

378.

[6] _Ibid._, I, p. 383.

[7] _Reponse a l'histoire des oracles_, p. 296.

[8] A. D. White, _History of the Warfare of Science with Theology_, II, p. 101.

[9] H. T. Buckle, _History of Civilization in England_, II, p. 270.

[10] G. F. Fort, _History of Medical Economy During the Middle Ages_, p. 201.

[11] For a full discussion of this subject, see A. D.

White, _History of the Warfare of Science with Theology_, II, pp. 97-134.

[12] A. D. White, _History of the Warfare of Science with Theology_, II, p. 128.

[13] Nash, _Life of Lord Westbury_, II, p. 78.

[14] c.o.c.kayne, _Leechdoms, Wort-cunning, and Star-craft of Early England_, II, p. 177.

[15] M. H. Dziewicki, "Exorcizo Te," _Nineteenth Century_, XXIV, p. 580.

[16] For a full discussion of this subject, see A. D.

White, _History of the Warfare of Science with Theology_, II, pp. 1-167.

[17] T. J. Pettigrew, _Superst.i.tions Connected with the History and Practice of Surgery and Medicine_, pp. 51 f.

[18] G. F. Fort, _History of Medical Economy During the Middle Ages_, pp. 142 f.

[19] E. Salverte, _Philosophy of Magic_ (trans.

Thompson), II, p. 96.

[20] E. A. King, "Medieval Medicine," _Nineteenth Century_, x.x.xIV, p. 151.

For further references to the effect of demonism, see J.

F. Nevius, _Demon Possession and Allied Themes_; J. M.

Peebles, _The Demonism of the Ages and Spirit Obsessions_; articles on "Demon," "Demonism,"

"Demoniacal Possession," and "Devil," in the _Catholic Encyclopedia_, the _New International Encyclopedia_, and the _Encyclopedia Britannica_.

CHAPTER IV

RELICS AND SHRINES

"A fouth o' auld knick-knackets, Rusty airn caps and jinglin' jackets, Wad haud the Lothians three, in tackets, A towmond guid; An' parritch pats, and auld saut backets, Afore the flood."--BURNS.

"For to that holy wood is consecrate A virtuous well, about whose flowery banks The nimble-footed fairies dance their rounds By the pale moonshine, dipping oftentimes Their stolen children, so to make them free From dying flesh and dull mortality."--FLETCHER.

"Ne was ther such another pardoner, For in his male he hadde a pilwebeer, Which that he saide was oure lady veyl; He seide, he hadde a gobet of the seyl That seynt Peter hadde, whan that he wente Uppon the see, til Jhesu Crist him pente.

He hadde a cros of latoun ful of stones, And in a glas he hadde pigges bones.

But with these reliques, whanne that he fond A poure persoun dwelling uppon lond, Upon a day he gat him more moneye Than that the persoun gat in monthes tweye.

And thus with feyned flaterie and j.a.pes, He made the persoun and the people his apes."--CHAUCER.

A wide-spread movement developed in the early church as a result of which innumerable miracles of healing were credited to the power of saints, indirectly through the medium of streams and pools of water which were reputed to have some connection with a particular saint, or through the efficacy still clinging to the relics of holy persons.

On account of the growth of the belief in demonism in the Christian church, and the need of supernatural means to counteract diabolic diseases, saintly relics came into common use for this purpose, and afterward when demonism was not so thoroughly credited as the cause of diseases, relics were still considered to hold their power over physical infirmities. In addition to this, the missionary efforts and successes of the church had some influence in establishing and continuing cures by relics and similar means. The missionaries found that their converts had formerly employed various amulets and charms for the healing of diseases, and that they continued to have great faith in them for that purpose. To wean them from their heathen customs, Christian amulets and charms had to be subst.i.tuted, or, as was sometimes the case, the heathen fetich was continued, but with a Christian significance.

The early Scandinavians carried effigies carved out of gold or silver as safeguards against disease, or applied those made out of certain other materials, as the mandragora root or linen or wood, to the diseased part as a cure of physical infirmities. Some of these images were carried over into Christianity, for in Charlemagne's time, headache was frequently cured by following the saintly recommendation to shape the figure of a head and place it on a cross. Fort tells us that "The introduction of Christianity among the Teutonic races offered no hindrance to a perpetuation, under new forms, of those social observances with which Norse temple idolatry was so intimately a.s.sociated. Offering to proselytes an unlimited number of demoniacal aeons, similar in individuality and prowess to those peopling the invisible universe, Northern mythology readily united with Christian demonology."[21]

The relics of the saints came to be the favorite subst.i.tute for the heathen charms. With the acceptance of the demoniacal cause of disease, exorcism by relics gradually grew in importance until it was firmly established and a preferred form in the sixth and subsequent centuries. Down to this time there still existed a feeble recognition of a possible system adapted to the cure of maladies, so far, perhaps, as the practice was restricted to munic.i.p.alities. The rapid advancement of saintly remedies, consecrated oils, and other puissant articles of ecclesiastical appliance, enabled and encouraged numerous churchmen to exercise the aesculapian art; this, together with the ban put upon physicians and scientific means, soon gave the church the monopoly of healing. Perhaps the most thorough attestation of the contempt into which physicians had fallen, compared with saintly medicists, is the fact that cures were invariably attempted after earthly medicine had been exhausted.[22]

Islam, Buddhism, and other religions have their shrines where some pilgrims are undoubtedly cured, but Christianity seems to have had the most varied and numerous collection. As early as the latter part of the fourth century miraculous powers were ascribed to the images of Jesus and the saints which adorned the walls of most of the churches of the time, and tales of wonderful cures were related of them. The intercessions of saints were invoked, and their relics began to work miracles.[23]

St. Cyril, St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, and others of the early church fathers of note maintained that the relics of the saints had great efficacy in the cure of diseases. St. Augustine tells us: "Besides many other miracles, that Gamaliel in a dream revealed to a priest named Lacia.n.u.s the place where the bones of St. Stephen were buried; that those bones being thus discovered, were brought to Hippo, the diocese of which St. Augustine was bishop; that they raised five persons to life; and that, although only a portion of the miraculous cures they effected had been registered, the certificates drawn up in two years in the diocese, and by the orders of the saint, were nearly seventy. In the adjoining diocese of Calama they were incomparably more numerous."[24] This great and intellectual man also mentions and evidently credits the story that some innkeeper of his time put a drug into cheese which changed travellers who partook of it into domestic animals, and he further a.s.serts after a personal test that peac.o.c.k's flesh will not decay.