440 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



All lionor to this work and to the men who engaged in it ; but, 

 as a rule, these establishments were few and poor, compared with 

 those for other diseases, and they usually degenerated into mad- 

 houses, where devils were cast out mainly by cruelty.* 



The first main weapon against the indwelling Satan continued 

 to be the exorcism ; but, under the influence of inferences from 

 Scripture farther and farther fetched, and of theological reason- 

 ing more and more subtle, it became something very different 

 from the gentle procedure of earlier times, and some description 

 of this great weapon at the time of its highest development will 

 throw light on the laws which govern the growth of theological 

 reasoning, as well as iipon the main subject in hand. 



A fundamental premise in the fully developed exorcism was 

 that, according to sacred Scripture, a main characteristic of Satan 

 is pride. Pride led him to rebel — for pride he was cast down ; 

 therefore the first thing to do, in driving him out of a lunatic, 

 was to strike a fatal blow at this pride — to disgust him. 



This theory was carried out logically, to the letter. The 

 treatises on the subject simply astound one by their wealth of 

 epithets — blasphemous and obscene — which it was allowable for 

 the exorcist to use in casting out devils. The " Treasury of Exor- 

 cisms " f contains hundreds of pages packed with the vilest epi- 

 thets which the worst imagination could invent for the purpose 

 of overwhelming the indwelling Satan. 



Some of those decent enough to be printed in these degenerate 

 days ran as follows : 



"Thou lustful and stupid one, . . . thou lean sow, famine- 

 stricken and most impure, . . . thou wrinkled beast, thou mangy 

 beast, thou beast of all beasts the most beastly, . . . thou mad 



* For a very fall and learned, if somewhat one-sided, account of the earlier effects of 

 this stream of charitable thought, see Yollemer, " Des Origines de la Charite Catholique," 

 Paris, 1858. It is instructive to note that, while this book is very full in regard to the 

 action of the Church on slavery and on provision for the widows and orphans, the sick, the 

 infirm, captives, and lepers, there is hardly a trace of any care for the insane. This same 

 want is incidentally shown by a typical example in Kriegk, " Aerzte, Heilanstalten und 

 Geisteskranke im mittelalterlichen Frankfurt," Frankfurt a. M., 1863, pp. 16, 17; also 

 Kirchhof, pp. 396, 397. On the general subject, see Semelaigne, as above, p. 214 ; also 

 Lecky, " Rationalism in Europe," i, 88 ; also Calmeil, 1, 116, 117. For the effect of Moslem 

 example in Spain and Italy, see Kraft-Ebing, as above, p. 45, note. 



f " Thesaurus Exorcismorum atque Conjurationum terribilium, potentissimorum, effica- 

 cissimorum, cum Practica probatissima : quibus spiritus maligni, Daemones Maleficiaque 

 omnia de Corporibus humanis obsessis, tanquam Flagillis Fustibusque fugantur, expellun- 

 tur," . . . Cologne, 1626. Many of the books of the exorcists were put upon the various 

 indexes of the Church, but this, the richest collection of all, and including nearly all those 

 condemned, was not prohibited until 1709. Scarcely less startling manuals continued even 

 later in use ; and exorcisms adapted to every emergency may, of course, still be found in 

 all the Benedictionals of the Church — even the latest. As an example, see the " Manuale 

 Benedictionum " published by the Bishop of Passau in 1849. 



