362 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the earth, but fell dead, struck by the shriek of the mandragora. The 

 jDlant was then taken home, washed in red wine, and wrapped in red- 

 and-white silk, laid in a shrine, washed on successive Fridays, and 

 dressed in a white frock. If the mandragora is bought it remains 

 with the person who thus secures it, regardless of where it is thrown, 

 until sold again. If kept until death, the person must depart to hell 

 with it. 



In the demoniacal fauna of the middle ages were-wolves played an 

 important part. They were supposed to be men who changed them- 

 selves for a time into wolves, and roved about hunting for children. 

 Augustine, one of the most prominent of the fathers and authors of 

 his time, taught that it was the devil who wrapped a wolf's hide 

 around a witch. Melanchthon also believed in this doctrine, and the 

 Emperor Sigismund had the question investigated " scientifically " in 

 the presence of theologians, and they came to the general agreement 

 that the were-wolf is " a positive and constant fact " ; for, the exist- 

 ence of the devil being accepted, there is no reason to deny that of 

 the were-wolf, supported as it is by the authority of the fathers of the 

 Church and by general experience. 



Another ghastly superstition of those times was that of belief in 

 vampires. These were disembodied souls, which had reclothed them- 

 selves in their buried bodies. In this garb they stole at night into 

 houses and sucked from the nipples of the sleeping their blood. The 

 person thus bereft of his vital fluid was in turn changed into a vam- 

 pire. The corpse of a person suspected of vampirism, if dug up, 

 was found well preserved, and an abundance of fresh blood would 

 flow from its mouth on pressing the stomach. To this horrible belief 

 is ascribed a kind of psychical pestilence, which spread terror in the 

 Austrian provinces even down into the eighteenth century. 



We have here given only a few examples of middle-age spiritual- 

 ism, and must refer the curious reader to the instructive pages of 

 Professor Rydberg's book for the fuller presentation of this painful 

 subject. The statements we have given may seem in the last degree 

 ludicrous and incredible, but they imply tragic realities and an unspeak- 

 able wretchedness in the mental states where such notions could be 

 harbored. The age that built the cathedrals of Europe was one of 

 fanatical religious earnestness, and from this we may infer the terrible 

 sincerity of the horrors of insane superstition by which the minds of 

 people were darkened and poisoned. 



