POPULAR BELIEFS. 



Superstitions derived from Paganism. Saturnalia of the Ancients. Festival of the Barbatorii. 

 F< stival of the Deacons. The Liberty of December, or the Fools' Feast. Festival of the Ass. 

 The Sens Ritual. Feast of the Innocents. The Moneys of the Innocents and the Fools. 

 Brotherhood of the Mere Sottt.The Mere Folk of Dijon. The Seipent, or the Devil. 

 Purgatory of St. Patrick. The Wandering Jew. The Antichrist and the End of the World. 

 The Prophecies of the Sibyls, of Merlin, and of Nostradamus. Dreams and Visions. 

 Spectres and Apparitions. Prodigies. Talismans. 



ACTANTIUS, in his book upon the "Divine 

 Institution," says, " Religion is the worship 

 of what is true, superstition of what is false." 

 ".All superstition is a great punishment and 

 a very dangerous infamy for men," added 

 St. Augustine. The Council of Paris, held in 

 829, pronounced very energetically against 

 "most pernicious evils, which are assuredly 

 remnants of paganism, such as magic, judicial 



astrology, witchcraft, sorcery or poisoning, divination, charms, and 

 the conjectures drawn from dreams." The Provincial Council, 

 in 14G6, admitted with St. Thomas that superstition is an idolatry. The 

 illustrious John Gerson had already declared that "superstition is a vice 

 opposed in the extreme to worship and religion." At all periods the Church, 

 by the organ of her doctors and her councils, waged war upon superstition, 

 as the good labourer roots up the tares which threaten to choke the wheat- 

 In some cases superstitious beliefs took the form of an exaggeration of faith 

 and an excess of devotion, in which event there was something touching 

 and respectable about them ; in others they were due to dcmonomania, and 

 wore the expression of a culpable or absurd credulity. In other cases, 

 again, they had their root in an erroneous or distorted tradition ; some- 



