On a subject so familiar to educated readers I may be excused from citing at length a vast mass of documents, barbaric in nature and only more or less civilized in circumstance, to illustrate the continuance of the doctrine of possession and the rite of exorcism through the middle ages and into modern times. A few salient examples will suffice. For a type of medical details, we may instance the recipes in the 'Early English Leechdoms': a cake of the 'thost' of a white hound baked with meal is to be taken against the attack by. dwarves (i.e. convulsions); a drink of herbs worked up off clear ale with the aid of garlic, holy water, and singing of masses, is to be drunk by a fiend-sick patient out of a church bell. Philosophical argument may be followed in the dissertations of the 'Malleus Maleficarum,' concerning demons substantially inhabiting men and causing illness in them, enquiries which may be pursued under the auspices of Glanvil in the 'Saducismus Triumphatus.' Historical anecdote bears record of the convulsive clairvoyant demon who possessed Nicola Aubry, and under the Bishop of Laon's exorcism testified in an edifying manner to the falsity of Calvinism; of Charles VI. of France, who was possessed, and whose demon a certain priest tried in vain to transfer into the bodies of twelve men who were chained up to receive it; of the German woman at Elbingerode who in a fit of toothache wished the devil might enter into her teeth, and who was possessed by six demons accordingly, which gave their names as Schalk der Wahrheit, Wirk, Widerkraut, Myrrha, Knip, Stüp; of George Lukins of Yatton, whom seven devils threw into fits and talked and sang and barked out of, and who was delivered by a solemn exorcism by seven clergymen at the Temple Church at Bristol in the year 1788.[1] A strong
- ↑ Details in Cockayne, 'Lecchdoms, &c., of Early England,' vol. i. p. 365,
book iii. ch. iv.; Calmet, 'Dissertation sur les Esprits'; Maury, 'Magie,' &c.; Lecky, 'Hist. of Rationalism.' Among particular passages arc Tertull. Apolog. 23; De Spectaculis, 26; Chrysostom. Homil. xxviii. in Matth. iv.; Cyril. Hierosol. Catech. xvi. 16; Minuc. Fel. Octavius. xxi.; Concil. Carthag. iv.; &c., &c.
