Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/98

88 piece of pastry in the form of a madonna made of flour and the water of Lourdes by the Order of Redemptorists at Cortona, in Tuscany. Quantities of these new-baked fetiches are manufactured and exported every year with the approval of His Holiness Leo XIII, by whom they are especially commended as a specific for demoniacal infestations.

In 1887, when the phenomena of hypnotism began to excite general interest and to be discussed by the press, La Civittá Cattolica, the official organ of the Vatican, published an article ascribing these strange manifestations to diabolical agencies, and asserting them to be desperate attempts of Satan to recover the sovereignty of this world, which the Church is gradually wresting from his grasp.

Unfortunately for the progress of knowledge and the general diffusion of enlightenment, this explanation of hypnotism is a fair example and illustration of the attitude of the papacy toward every puzzling problem which presents itself to the human mind for investigation. There is only one solution: the devil is to pay. The same opinion is held and taught by the Greek Church, as well as by conservative Lutheranism and many other rigidly orthodox sects of Protestantism. Luther asserted that "if a man loses an eye or hand, falls into the fire and is burned to death, or into the water and is drowned, mounts a ladder and breaks his neck, tumbles down without knowing why or how, or incurs daily unforeseen accidents, all these things are mere tricks and onsets of the devil" (eitel Teufelswürf und Schläg'). If a big bluebottle buzzed about in his study and happened to light on his pen, he was sure that it was an emissary of Satan endeavoring to hinder him in his work. Even the refined and scholarly Melanchthon relates similar experiences: "When I was in Tübingen," he says, "I saw every night flames which burned a long time and then vanished in a dense cloud of smoke. Likewise in Heidelberg, forms like falling stars appeared to me every night. They were undoubtedly devils, which are constantly roving about among men." This belief in the omnipresence of satanic satellites, embodied in animate and inanimate objects, was easily confirmed by the citation and frequent perversion of scriptural texts. Thus the words of the Psalmist, "Set a watch, O Lord, before my mouth: keep the doors of my lips," was interpreted, not as entreaty to be saved from the sin of evil-speaking, but as a prayer for protection against evil spirits, who might take advantage of the act of oscitation to enter into and get possession of the human body. It was formerly believed that the devil drowzed people and thus incited them to yawn for this express purpose; hence the custom, once generally prevalent and still practiced in Spain and Italy, of making the sign of the cross over the mouth in