Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/642

624 trials of human beings on charges of sorcery. Simple country people finding the regular process very tedious and expensive, purchased charms and exorcisms from empirical, unlicensed exorcists at a much cheaper rate, but, if any of the parties concerned in this contraband traffic were discovered, death by stake and fagot was their inevitable fate. Still there was one animal, the serpent, which, as it had been cursed at the earliest period of the world's history, might be exorcised and charmed (so that it could not leave the spot where it was first seen) by any one, lay or cleric, without the slightest imputation of sorcery. The formula ran thus:-"By him who created thee, I adjure thee that thou remain in the spot where thou art, whether it be thy will to do so, or otherwise; and I curse thee with the curse with which the Lord hath cursed thee."

In the seventeenth century the cases of law proceedings against animals became rare, for the Church at this period had almost renounced these absurd practices. Thus, for example, in the "Ritual of Evreux," of 1606, Cardinal Duperron declares that no one should exorcise animals nor use prayers and formulas without his express permission. But the delusion was too widespread to be restrained. In Spain and Italy exorcists abounded, as in France. Azpilcenta, of Navarre, a distinguished Spanish canonist, asserts that rats when exorcised were ordered to depart for foreign countries, and would march in large bodies to the seacoast, and thence set off swimming in search of desert islands. Father Manoel Bernardes, in his "Nova Floresta" (published at Lisbon, 1706-1708), gives a long account of the trial of ants in Brazil in the commencement of the eighteenth century. The particulars are too long to be given in detail, but it appears that the monks of St. Anthony complained of the sacrilegious behavior of certain ants that ate their grain, and otherwise misconducted themselves, devouring the cloths of the altar, and bringing into the church pieces of shrouds from the graves beneath the church. The sentence was that the friars should provide a suitable place for the ants to remove to, which seems to have satisfied the defendants—it nigrum campis agmen; millions of ants immediately came out, forming themselves in long, dense columns, and proceeded direct to the field assigned to them.

In America birds of prey and insects were excommunicated. The Baron de la Houtan, who toward the end of the seventeenth century passed several years in Canada, relates that "the number of turtle-doves was so great in that country that the bishop was obliged to excommunicate them several times on account of the damages done by them." A similar infliction was pronounced in Peru against the termites, a species of white ant, that had got into a library and devoured a great number of books. In the "Voyages of La Perouse," it is stated that millions of cockroaches got into the bread-room, and recourse was had to exorcisms more than once.

The ceremonies attending the exorcism of animals were sometimes