Part 7 (1/2)
Although not strictly a secret society, the Albigenses were divided after the secret society system into initiates and semi-initiates. The former, few in number, known as the _Perfecti_, led in appearance an austere life, refraining from meat and professing abhorrence of oaths or of lying. The mystery in which they enveloped themselves won for them the adoring reverence of the _Credentes_, who formed the great majority of the sect and gave themselves up to every vice, to usury, brigandage, and perjury, and whilst describing marriage as prost.i.tution, condoning incest and all forms of licence.[217] The _Credentes_, who were probably not fully initiated into the Dualist doctrines of their superiors, looked to them for salvation through the laying-on of hands according to the system of the Manicheans.
It was amongst the n.o.bles of Languedoc that the Albigenses found their princ.i.p.al support. This ”Judaea of France,” as it has been called, was peopled by a medley of mixed races, Iberian, Gallic, Roman, and Semitic.[218] The n.o.bles, very different from the ”ignorant and pious chivalry of the North,” had lost all respect for their traditions.
”There were few who in going back did not encounter some Saracen or Jewish grandmother in their genealogy.”[219] Moreover, many had brought back to Europe the laxity of morals they had contracted during the Crusades. The Comte de Comminges practised polygamy, and, according to ecclesiastical chronicles, Raymond VI, Comte de Toulouse, one of the most ardent of the Albigense _Credentes_, had his harem.[220] The Albigensian movement has been falsely represented as a protest merely against the tyranny of the Church of Rome; in reality it was a rising against the fundamental doctrines of Christianity--more than this, against all principles of religion and morality. For whilst some of the sect openly declared that the Jewish law was preferable to that of the Christians,[221] to others the G.o.d of the Old Testament was as abhorrent as the ”false Christ” who suffered at Golgotha; the old hatred of the Gnostics and Manicheans for the demiurgus lived again in these rebels against the social order. Forerunners of the seventeenth-century Libertines and eighteenth-century Illuminati, the Albigense n.o.bles, under the pretext of fighting the priesthood, strove to throw off all the restraints the Church imposed.
Inevitably the disorders that took place throughout the South of France led to reprisals, and the Albigenses were suppressed with all the cruelty of the age--a fact which has afforded historians the opportunity to exalt them as n.o.ble martyrs, victims of ecclesiastical despotism. But again, as in the case of the Templars, the fact that they were persecuted does not prove them innocent of the crimes laid to their charge.
Satanism
At the beginning of the fourteenth century another development of Dualism, far more horrible than the Manichean heresy of the Albigenses, began to make itself felt. This was the cult of Satanism, or black magic. The subject is one that must be approached with extreme caution, owing to the fact that on one hand much that has been written about it is the result of mediaeval superst.i.tion, which sees in every departure from the Roman Catholic Faith the direct intervention of the Evil One, whilst on the other hand the conspiracy of history, which denies _in toto_ the existence of the Occult Power, discredits all revelations on this question, from whatever source they emanate, as the outcome of hysterical imagination.[222] This is rendered all the easier since the subject by its amazing extravagance lends itself to ridicule.
It is, however, idle to deny that the cult of evil has always existed; the invocation of the powers of darkness was practised in the earliest days of the human race and, after the Christian era, found its expression, as we have seen, in the Cainites, the Euchites, and the Luciferians. These are not surmises, but actual facts of history.
Towards the end of the twelfth century Luciferianism spread eastwards through Styria, the Tyrol, and Bohemia, even as far as Brandenburg; by the beginning of the thirteenth century it had invaded western Germany, and in the fourteenth century reached its zenith in that country, as also in Italy and France. The cult had now reached a further stage in its development, and it was not the mere propitiation of Satanael as the prince of this world practised by the Luciferians, but actual Satanism--the love of evil for the sake of evil--which formed the doctrine of the sect known in Italy as _la vecchia religione_ or the ”old religion.” Sorcery was adopted as a profession, and witches, not, as is popularly supposed, sporadic growths, were trained in schools of magic to practise their art. These facts should be remembered when the Church is blamed for the violence it displayed against witchcraft--it was not individuals, but a system which it set out to destroy.
The essence of Satanism is desecration. In the ceremonies for infernal evocation described by Eliphas Levi we read: ”It is requisite to profane the ceremonies of the religion one belongs to and to trample its holiest symbols under foot.”[223] This practice found a climax in desecrating the Holy Sacrament. The consecrated wafer was given as food to mice, toads, and pigs, or denied in unspeakable ways. A revolting description of the Black Ma.s.s may be found in Huysmans's book _La-bas_. It is unnecessary to transcribe the loathsome details here. Suffice it, then, to show that this cult had a very real existence, and if any further doubt remains on the matter, the life of Gilles de Rais supplies doc.u.mentary evidence of the visible results of black magic in the Middle Ages.
Gilles de Rais was born at Machecoul in Brittany about the year 1404.
The first period of his life was glorious; the companion and guide of Jeanne d'Arc, he became Marechal of France and distinguished himself by many deeds of valour. But after dissipating his immense fortune, largely on Church ceremonies carried out with the wildest extravagance, he was led to study alchemy, partly by curiosity and partly as a means for restoring his shattered fortunes. Hearing that Germany and Italy were the countries where alchemy flourished, he enlisted Italians in his service and was gradually drawn into the further region of magic.
According to Huysmans, Gilles de Rais had remained until this moment a Christian mystic under the influence of Jeanne d'Arc, but after her death--possibly in despair--he offered himself to the powers of darkness. Evokers of Satan now flocked to him from every side, amongst them Prelati, an Italian, by no means the old and wrinkled sorcerer of tradition, but a young and attractive man of charming manners. For it was from Italy that came the most skilful adepts in the art of alchemy, astrology, magic, and infernal evocation, who spread themselves over Europe, particularly France. Under the influence of these initiators Gilles de Rais signed a letter to the devil in a meadow near Machecoul asking him for ”knowledge, power, and riches,” and offering in exchange anything that might be asked of him with the exception of his life or his soul. But in spite of this appeal and of a pact signed with the blood of the writer, no Satanic apparitions were forthcoming.
It was then that, becoming still more desperate, Gilles de Rais had recourse to the abominations for which his name has remained infamous--still more frightful invocations, loathsome debaucheries, perverted vice in every form, Sadic cruelties, horrible sacrifices, and, finally, holocausts of little boys and girls collected by his agents in the surrounding country and put to death with the most inhuman tortures.
During the years 1432-40 literally hundreds of children disappeared.
Many of the names of the unhappy little victims were preserved in the records of the period. Gilles de Rais met with a well-deserved end: in 1440 he was hanged and burnt. So far he does not appear to have found a panegyrist to place him in the ranks of n.o.ble martyrs.
It will, of course, be urged that the crimes here described were those of a criminal lunatic and not to be attributed to any occult cause; the answer to this is that Gilles was not an isolated unit, but one of a group of occultists who cannot all have been mad. Moreover, it was only after his invocation of the Evil One that he developed these monstrous proclivities. So also his eighteenth-century replica, the Marquis de Sade, combined with his abominations an impa.s.sioned hatred of the Christian religion.
What is the explanation of this craze for magic in Western Europe?
Deschamps points to the Cabala, ”that science of demoniacal arts, of which the Jews were the initiators,” and undoubtedly in any comprehensive review of the question the influence of the Jewish Cabalists cannot be ignored. In Spain, Portugal, Provence, and Italy the Jews by the fifteenth century had become a power; as early as 1450 they had penetrated into the intellectual circles of Florence, and it was also in Italy that, a century later, the modern Cabalistic school was inaugurated by Isaac Luria (1533-72), whose doctrines were organized into a practical system by the Hasidim of Eastern Europe for the writing of amulets, the conjuration of devils, mystical jugglery with numbers and letters, etc.[224] Italy in the fifteenth century was thus a centre from which Cabalistic influences radiated, and it may be that the Italians who indoctrinated Gilles de Rais had drawn their inspiration from this source. Indeed Eliphas Levi, who certainly cannot be accused of ”Anti-Semitism,” declares that ”the Jews, the most faithful trustees of the secret of the Cabala, were almost always the reat masters of magic in the Middle Ages,”[225] and suggests that Gilles de Rais took his monstrous recipes for using the blood of murdered children ”from some of those old Hebrew _grimoires_ (books on magic), which, if they had been known, would have sufficed to hold up the Jews to the execration of the whole earth.”[226] Voltaire, in his _Henriade_, likewise attributes the magical blood-rites practised in the sixteenth century to Jewish inspiration:
Dans l'ombre de la nuit, sous une voute obscure, Le silence conduit leui a.s.semblee impure.
A la pale lueur d'un magique flambeau S'eleve un vil autel dresse sur un tombeau.
C'est la que des deux rois on placa les images, Objets de leur terreur, objets de leurs outrages.
Leurs sacrileges mains out mele sur l'autel A des noms infernaux le nom de l'eternel.
Sur ces murs tenebreux des lances sont rangees, Dans des vases de sang leurs pointes sont plongees; Appareil menacant de leur mystere affreux.
Le pretre de ce temple est un de ces Hebreux Qui, proscrits sur la terre et citoyens du monde, Portent de mers en mers leur misere profonde, Et, d'un antique ramas de superst.i.tions, Out rempli des longtemps toutes les nations, etc.
Voltaire adds in a footnote: ”It was ordinarily Jews that were made use of for magical operations. This ancient superst.i.tion comes from the secrets of the Cabala, of which the Jews called themselves the sole depositaries. Catherine de Medicis, the Marechal d'Ancre, and many others employed Jews for these spells.”
This charge of black magic recurs all through the history of Europe from the earliest times. The Jews are accused of poisoning wells, of practising ritual murder, of using stolen church property for purposes of desecration, etc. No doubt there enters into all this a great amount of exaggeration, inspired by popular prejudice and mediaeval superst.i.tion. Yet, whilst condeming the persecution to which the Jews were subjected on this account, it must be admitted that they laid themselves open to suspicion by their real addiction to magical arts. If ignorant superst.i.tion is found on the side of the persecutors, still more amazing superst.i.tion is found on the side of the persecuted.
Demonology in Europe was in fact essentially a Jewish science, for although a belief in evil spirits existed from the earliest times and has always continued to exist amongst primitive races, and also amongst the ignorant cla.s.ses in civilized countries, it was mainly through the Jews that these dark superst.i.tions were imported to the West, where they persisted not merely amongst the lower strata of the Jewish population, but formed an essential part of Jewish tradition. Thus the Talmud says:
If the eye could perceive the demons that people the universe, existence would be impossible. The demons are more numerous than we are: they surround us on all sides like trenches dug round vineyards. Every one of us has a thousand on his left hand and ten thousand on his right. The discomfort endured by those who attend rabbinical conferences ... comes from the demons mingling with men in these circ.u.mstances. Besides, the fatigue one feels in one's knees in walking comes from the demons that one knocks up against at every step. If the clothing of the Rabbis wears out so quickly, it is again because the demons rub up against them. Whoever wants to convince himself of their presence has only to surround his bed with sifted cinders and the next morning he will see the imprints of c.o.c.ks' feet.[227]
The same treatise goes on to give directions for seeing demons by burning portions of a black cat and placing the ashes in one's eye: ”then at once one perceives the demons.” The Talmud also explains that devils particularly inhabit the waterspouts on houses and are fond of drinking out of water-jugs, therefore it is advisable to pour a little water out of a jug before drinking, so as to get rid of the unclean part.[228]