Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/416

 400 SORCERY AND OCCULT ARTS. were well advanced. They show how impossible it had been to eradicate the old superstitions, and that the pagan observances and auguries still flourished among all classes, which is confirmed by the denunciations of the Spanish councils and ecclesiastical writers. They have a further significance as presenting a middle term between the severity of Home and the laxity of the other Barbarian tribes.* These latter were ruder and less amenable to Roman influences. In their conversion the Church rendered an immense service to humanity, and it did not dare to interfere too rudely with the customs and prejudices of its unruly neophytes ; in fact, it har- monized its own with them as far as it could, and became consid- erably modified in consequence. This process is well symbolized in the instructions of Gregory the Great to Augustin, his mission- ary to England, to convert the pagan temples into churches by sprinkling them with holy water, so that converts might grow ac- customed to their new faith by worshipping in the wonted places, while the sacrifices to demons were to be replaced by processions in honor of some saint or martyr, when oxen were to be slaugh- tered, not to propitiate idols, but in praise of God, to be eaten by the faithful. In this assimilation of Christianity to paganism it is not surprising that Kedwald, King of East Anglia, after his conversion set up in his temple two altars, at one of which he worshipped the true God and at the other offered sacrifices to demons. f The similar adoption by Christian magic of elements from that which it supplanted is well illustrated by the hymn, or rather incantation, known as the Lorica of St. Patrick, in which the forces of nature and the Deity are both summoned as by an enchanter to the assistance of the thaumaturge. A MS. of the seventh century assures us that " Every person who sings it every day with all his attention on God shall not have demons appear- ing to his face. It will be a safeguard to him against sudden death. It will be a protection to him against every poison and envy. It will be an armor to his soul after his death. Patrick sang this at VI. ii. 1, 3, 5.— Concil. Bracarens. II. ami. 572 c. 71. — Cone. Toletan. IV. arm. 633 c. 28. — Isidor. Hispalens. Etyuiol. Tin. 9 ; de Ord. Creatur. viii. — S. Pirmiani de Libb. Canon. Scarapsus. t Had dan and Stubbs, Concil. III. 37.— Bedae H. E. n. 15.
 * LI. Wisigoth. n. iv. 1; vi. i. 4; vi. ii. 1, 3, 4, 5. — Fuero Juzgo n. iv. 1;