Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 7.djvu/769

 IMPOSTORS

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IMPOSTORS

had been clearly foretold by Christ in the Gospels. " Beware of false prophets," He had said, " who come to you in the clothing of sheep, but inwardly they are ravening wolves" (Matt., vii, 15), and again "there will rise up false Christs and false prophets and they shall shew signs and wonders, to seduce (if it were pos- silile) even the elect" (Mark, xiii, 22). The same note is heard in the other books of the New Testament; for example: " Many false prophets are gone out into the world "(IJohn,iv, 1); " But there were also false proph- ets among the people, even as there shall be among you lying teachers" (II Pet., ii, l),and the early fulfil- ment of these predictions is attested by the language of the "Didache" (cc. xi and xvi), and by Justin Martyr (about A. D. 150) who observes: "Our Lord said that many false prophets and false Christs would appear in His name and would deceive many ; and so it has come about. For many have taught godless, blasphemous and unholy doctrines forging tliem in His name " (Dial., c. Ixxxii). Putting aside, as lying beyond our province, the succession of pseudo-Messiahs among the Jews, men like John of Gischala and Simon Bar-Giora, who played so terrible a part in the story of the siege of Jerusalem, we may recognize in the Simon Magus of whom we read in Acts viii, 5-24, the first notorious impostor of Christian church history. He offered St. Peter money that he might have power to impart to others the gifts of the Holy Ghost, and the .\cts do not tell us very much more about him than that he had previously practised sorcery and bewitched the people of Samaria. But Justin MartjT and other early writers inform us that he afterwards went to Rome, worked miracles there by the power of demons, and received Divine honours both in Rome and in his own country. Though much extravagant legend after- wards gathered rountl the name of this Simon, antl in particular the story of a supposed contest in Rome between him and St. Peter, when Simon attempting to fly was brought to earth by the Apostle's word, break- ing his leg in his fall, it seems nevertheless probable that there must be some foundation in fact for the account given liy Justin and accepted by Eusebius. The historical Simon Magus no douljt founded some sort of religion as a counterfeit of Christianity in which he claimed to play a part analogous to that of Christ.

With the heresies of the second and third centuries, as with those of later ages, a large number of impos- tors were unquestionably associated. The Gnostic Marcus is declared to have combined the most extrav- agant teaching of formula, by which the initiated would after death leave their bodies in this world, their souls with the Demiurge, and " ascend in their spirits at the pleroma", with the lowest kind of juggling tricks, pretending, for example, to show the contents of a glass chalice miraculously changed in colour after consecration (Irenieus, "Contra Haereses", I, xiii- xxi). Similarly it is at least very doubtful whether the frenzied prophesyings of the two women, Priscilla and Maximilla, who left their husbands to scour the country of Phrygia with the heretic Montanus, are not to be regarded as conscious impostures. Their ortho- dox opponents strenuously maintained that all the leaders of the sect were possessed by the devil and ought to be compelled to submit to exorcism. Neither were such extravagances confined to the East, although they most abounded there. St. Gregory of Tours tells us of a half crazy fanatic at the end of the sixth century who declared himself to be Christ and who travelled in the neighbourhood of Aries in company with a woman whom he called Mary. He was de- clared to work miracles of healing and crowds of people believed in him and paid him Divine honour. In the end he moved about with a following of more than three thousand persons until he was killed in offering violence to an envoy of Bishop Aurelius. The woman named Mary under torture made a dis-

closure of all his frauds, but many of the populace still believed in them, and a number of other adventurers accompanied by hysterical prophetesses seem to have floiu-ished in Gaul at the same epoch (Greg. Turon., " Hist.", X, 25). Still more famous were the impostors Adelbert and Clement, who opposed the authority of St. Boniface in Germany about the year 744. Adel- bert, who was a Gaul, claimed to have been honoured with supernatural favours from his birth. He drew the people away from the churches, gave them pieces of his nails and hair as relics, and told them that it was unnecessary for them to confess their sins to him be- cause he already read their hearts. Clement, a Scots- man, rejected the canons of the Church about mar- riage and other disciplinary questions and maintained that Jesus Christ, in his descent into Hell, had set free all the souls confined there, even the lost and the un- baptized. The question of these heretical bishops was referred to Rome and discussed by Pope Zachary in a council held there in 745, at which there was read aloud a miraculous letter from Jesus Christ which Adelbert pretended had fallen from heaven and had been picked up by the -Archangel Michael. In the end the council pronounced sentence of deposition and excommunication against the two accused (cf . Hefele, "Conciliengeschichte", §§363-367; Hauck, "Ivirch- engeschichte Deutschlands", I, 554 seq.).

Throughout the Middle Ages we meet with many examples of such half crazy fanatics, and our imper- fect information does not usually allow us to pro- nounce in what measure insanity or conscious fraud was responsible for their pretensions. Such cases are wont more particularly to be multiplied at times of national calamity or religious excitement. The epoch of the year 1000, owing to some vague expectation (an expectation, however, which has been much exagger- ated), of the coming of the day of judgment (cf . Apoc. XX, 7) marked such a crisis, and Raoul Glaber (Migne, P. L., CXLII, 643-644) tells us in particular of two ecclesiastical agitators, one named Leotardus, at Chalons, and the other Wilgardus, at Ravenna, who at that time cau.sed great disturbance. Leotardus pre- tended to have had extraordinary revelations and preached some sort of socialistic doctrine preventing the people from paying tithes. When his followers eventually deserted him he drowned himself in a well. Wilgardus appears to have been a literary fanatic who believed that he had been commanded by Virgil, Horace, and Juvenal in a vision to correct the dogmatic teaching of the Church. He had many followers and formed for a while a sort of schism until he was con- demned by papal authority. Of all the deluded per- sons, however, whose sanity must always remain in doubt, the Anabaptist John of Leyden (John Bokel- zoon), who became tyrant of Miinster at a much later period (1533), is the most remarkable. He believed himself endowed with supernatural powers and gifts, but preferred to act as the public executioner of his own sentences, hacking his victims to pieces with his own hands. The period of the great Schism of the West was also an epoch when many fanatical or de- signing persons reaped a rich harvest out of the cred- ulitj[ of the populace. A Greek, known as Paulus Tigrinus, pretending to be Patriarch of Constantinople, after a successful career of fraud in Cyprus and else- where, came to Rome, where he was detected and imprisoned by Urban VI. At the election of Boniface IX he was released and took refuge with the Duke of Savoy, whom he imposed upon with the same pretence of being the true Patriarch of Constantinople. By this prince he was sent with a dozen horses to Avignon and received as patriarch by the antipope, Clement VII. Thence he eventually made his escape, carrying with him many rich presents which he had received from the deluded Clement. Another famous impostor of this period was a Franciscan friar, one James of Jiilich, who performed all the functions of a bishop