WITCHCRAFT IN BAVARIA. 



45 



The Prussian Government also exercises a certain control over the 

 appointment of the professors. As an illustration of the sort of 

 knowledge and intellectual discipline acquired in this academy, 

 which has nearly five hundred students and about fifty professors, 

 we may cite a course of lectures delivered in the summer semester 

 of 1897 by Prof. Joseph Bautz on Die Lehre von den letzten 

 Dingen, or the doctrine of the last day, including the dogmas of 

 the Romish Church concerning the final judgment, purgatory, 

 heaven, and hell. On each of these subjects Professor Bautz has 

 already published a little volume, issued at Mainz with the appro- 

 bation of the bishop, and therefore containing views accepted by 

 the highest ecclesiastical authorities as orthodox. His positive 

 knowledge of the topography of the infernal, purgatorial, and 

 celestial regions is most remarkable, and can hardly fail to excite 

 the amazement and admiration of the young candidates for holy 

 orders who listen to his academical lectures. Purgatory, he tells 

 us, is three stories high and all aglow with flames, which, however, 

 are rather light-colored and pinkish in contrast with the dark-red 

 and lurid fires of hell. The lower story of purgatory borders on 

 hell, while the upper story is near the gates of heaven. Thus the 

 same fire, although in different intensity, serves to torture the 

 damned and to purge the just. This arrangement, he adds, is such 

 as we should naturally expect from the all-wise God, who avoids 

 superfluities and chooses the simplest and most economical way of 

 accomplishing his eternal purposes; and it is also confirmed by the 

 testimony of Mechthild of Magdeburg, St. Brigitta, and of a vision 

 recorded by the Venerable Bede. The professor's so-called " facts," 

 which he is constantly and copiously citing in proof of his theses 

 consist almost wholly of what he terms " visions and private revela- 

 tions," or what the carnal-minded scientist would dismiss with con- 

 tempt as the wild dreams and morbid imaginations and " airy noth- 

 ings " of ecstatic saints and hysterical nuns. Thus, as regards the 

 duration of purgatory, he says, Catharine Emmerich speaks of souls 

 compelled to remain in that place for centuries; according to Ma- 

 rina of Escobar, the average time seems to be at least from ten to 

 twenty and fifty years or more; but Erancisca of the Holy Sacra- 

 ment was visited by pious Carmelite nuns, who had been in purga- 

 torial fires for sixty years and expected to abide there much longer. 

 A little girl, who died when she was eight years old, had been in 

 purgatory sixteen years when last heard from through " the appari- 

 tion of 1870"; this same authority, frequently adduced by the 

 learned professor, states that some souls are not released from purga- 

 torial punishment until the end of the world. 



How material fire can affect disembodied spirits, and whether 



