Europe's inner demons

*

The reference is presumably to Zachariah, son of Baruch, who was murdered in the Temple, along with the high priest Ananias, by the Zealots in A.D. 67.

**

The main evidence for cannibalistic infanticide in the cult of Dionysos consists of a red-figured vase at the British Museum. It shows that by the fourth century B.C. the Athenian worshippers of Dionysos regarded the idea with horror. Even in the Thracian religion itself, by that time the sacrificial victim had long been an animal. Cf. W. C. K. Guthrie, Orpheus and Greek religion, London, 1935, pp. 130-32; E. O. James, Sacrifice and sacrament, London, 1962, pp. 97, 243. On the human leopards of Sierra Leone see K. J. Beatty, Human Leopards: an account of the trials of Human Leopards before the Special Commission Court, London, 1915.

***

A passage in I Corinthians 5 has sometimes been taken as showing that already in the days of St Paul a gnostic sect at Corinth was practising “libertinism”; cf. W. Schmithals, Die Gnosis in Korinth, Göttingen, 1954. But the references to fornication do not even suggest mass orgies.

†

Apart from Carpocratians, the Borborians or Phibionites of Alexandria have sometimes been blamed for the accusations brought against the Christians; see S.Benko, “The libertine Gnostic sect of the Phibionites according to Epiphanius”, in Vigiliae Christiatiae, vol. 21, No. 1, Amsterdam, 1967, pp. 103-19, and Dolger, op cit., p. 220. The arguments do not convince me. The displeasing practices attributed to these people are very different from those attibuted to the Christians. Moreover, whatever Epiphanius may have observed in 330–340, it can throw no light on the state of affairs in the second century.

††

If one excludes a curious revival in the mid-nineteenth century, which involved no less a personage than Karl Marx. In 1847 Marx read and was impressed by the newly published work by Georg Friedrich Daumer, Die Geheimnisse des christlichen Altertums (The secrets of Christian Antiquity). In a speech delivered to a meeting of German-speaking workers in London in November of that year Marx summarized its argument as follows: “Daumer demonstrates that the Christians really did slaughter human beings and eat and drink human flesh at Communion. This explains why the Romans, who tolerated all religious sects, persecuted Christians, and why the Christians later destroyed all pagan literature that was directed against Christianity. . This history, as it is portrayed in Daumer’s work, is the final blow to Christianity, and we may ask what it means to us. It gives us the certainty that the old society is ending, and that the structure of deceit and prejudices is collapsing.” The meeting was much impressed, and it was decided to purchase Daumer’s book. Later Marx became more doubtful about the theory, while in 1858 Daumer himself formally renounced it and became a fervent Catholic. But the episode remains a curious one: Marx on Christian ritual murder appears in the same volume of the official German edition of the collected works as the Communist Manifesto. Cf. W. Schulze, “Der Vorwurf ties Ritualmordes gegen die Christen im Altertum und in der Neuzeit”, in Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, vol. 65, Gotha, 1953-4, pp. 304–306.

*

He calls them “Messalians”;just as John of Ojun also refers to “Messalianism” in connection with the Paulicians. It is now established, however, that neither of the sects in question had anything to do with the sect of Messalians, or Euchites, which flourished in Mesopotamia, Syria, Armenia, Sinai and Egypt up to the seventh century. By the time of John of Ojun, and still more by the time of Psellos, “Messalian” was a mere term of abuse. See H.-Ch. Puech and A. Vaillant, Le traité contre les Bogomiles de Cosrnas le Prêtre (Travaux publiés par l’lnstitut d’Etudes Slaves, No. 21), Paris, 1945, pp. 327 seq; and cf. Conybeare, op. cit., Introduction, p. lvii. On the real nature and beliefs of the Paulicians and Bogomiles, see below.

**

The accusatory procedure is more fully described at pp. 160-63, below.

***

It was long accepted, and is often repeated in present-day works as though it were established fact, that this bull was directed against the Stedinger, a peasant people who lived in the extreme north of Germany. Yet the text of the bull shows that it was directed against the heretical sects with which Conrad of Marburg was concerning himself, in the Rhine valley and in Thuringia. Conrad never got near the Stedinger.

*

The present chapter was written long before the appearance of the work of Robert E. Lemer, The heresy of the Free Spirit in the later middle ages, University of California Press, 1972; but it is gratifying to note that Professor Lemer (pp. 25 seq.) reaches the same conclusion, i.e. that all these groups of “Luciferans” were in fact Waldensians. The identity of the two was indeed perceived already by Hermann Haupt in 1888. In the case of the Brandenburg heretics it has been conclusively demonstrated by Dietrich Kurze. For references see Note 12.

**

On the significance of this term see below, p. 100.

***

This literary tradition must have had even greater continuity than appears from the above account. The story as told by Biondo in the fifteenth century, and as repeated by Sepúlveda in the sixteenth, contains the following curious detail: “Me in whose hands the baby expires, is held to be appointed supreme pontitf by the divine spirit.” This detail does not appear in the earlier western sources known to us, such as Bemardin of Siena and Guibert de Nogent. On the other hand, it was known in Armenia seven centuries earlier. John of Ojun’s treatise against the Paulicians says: “They venerate him in whose hands the child expires, and promote him head of the sect.” So far as is known, John of Ojun’s treatise first became accessible in the West when an Armenian manuscript, buried in a monastery in Venice, was translated into Latin in 1834. Yet the resemblance is surely too close, and too bizarre, to be explicable by coincidence. There must have been more links in this literary tradition than are now discernible.

†

On the Free Spirit see Robert E. Lerner, The heresy of the Free Spirit in the later middle ages, University of California Press, 1972, which is not only the most recent but also the most thorough survey of this difficult field. Lemer doubts whether the Brethren ever practised free love at all. In view of what is known about the English Ranters of the seventeenth century, who professed very similar doctrines, this scepticism seems excessive. But however that may be, Lerner demonstrates conclusively (pp. 29–31) that the orgy at Cologne was imaginary — a conclusion which I reached independently when I came to revise The Pursuit of the Millennium for the 1970 edition.

*

In London the Inns of Court known as the Inner and Middle Temple owe their names to the fact that they occupy the site of the Templars’ headquarters.

**

On the idol(s) see J. H. Probst-Biraben and A. Maitrot de la Motte-Capron, “Les idoles des chevaliers du Temple”, in Mercure de France, vol. 294 (August-September 1939), pp. 569-90. The authors point out that all that was actually found in the Templar houses was a single reliquary in the form of a bust of a woman, such as often figured in perfectly orthodox Catholic devotions directed to a female saint or martyr. The notion that the Templars possessed “idols” belonging to a Gnostic cult is an invention of the nineteenth-century Austrian Orientalist von Hammer-Purgstall. The original persecutors of the Temple never suggested it. And of course, as Mohammed is never worshipped by Moslems, and as Islam strictly forbids all forms of idolatry, the Templars cannot have possessed idols representing Mohammed, either. How, in the course of the interrogations, the idol(s) turned into a magical head is described in S. Reinach, “La tête magique des Templiers”, in Revue de l’histoire des religions, Paris, 1911, pp. 252-66.

***

The nature and development of this procedure are described at pp. 23-4 above.

†

See Chapter Ten, sections 1 and 2.

*

In this and the following quotations I have modernized the spelling and replaced a few obsolete words by their modern equivalents. N.C.

*

i. e. man-slayers, murderers.

**

Tetragrammaton: the four consonants forming the Hebrew "incommunicable name" of God.

*

In 1301-3 Walter de Langton, bishop of Coventry and Lichfield and treasurer of England, had to face charges which included intimate dealings with the Devil; but ritual magic was implied rather than explicit. For a recent account of the episode: Alice Beardwood, “The trial of Walter Langton, Bishop of Lichfield, 1307–1312”, in Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, New Series, vol. 54, Part 3, Philadelphia, 1964, especially pp. 7–8.

**

In reality this was no doubt a ring with a talismanic stone, bearing the symbol of a planet. These symbols often comprised the image of a Greco-Roman god with animal’s features. To wear a talismanic ring showing Jupiter with a lion’s face and bird’s feet, for instance, was a way of winning the favour of a powerful person, increasing one’s reputation and seeing one’s enemies humiliated: Boniface may well have adopted it. Cf. “Picatrix”. Das Ziel der Weisett von Pseudo-Magriti. Translated into German from the Arabic by Hellmut Ritter and Martin Ritter (Studies of the Warburg Institute, vol. 27), London, 1962.

***

As bishop of Pamiers 1317-26 Jacques Fournier, later Pope Benedict XII, operated as inquisitor for his diocese and tried thirty-eight cases of heresy and one case of superstitious practices. His register includes not a single case of ritual magic. Cf. J. Duvernoy, Le registre d'Inquisition de Jacques Fournier (1318–1325), 2 vols., Toulouse, 1963.

†

It seems that her son William was already adult in 1302, i.e. twenty-two years before the trial; see T. Wright, Narratives of sorcery and witchcraft, vol. I, London, 1851, p. 26.

††

Peter of Greyerz told the story of the trial to the Dominican Johannes Nider, who included it in his book Formicarius, which he wrote in 1435-7; the relevant passages are reprinted in Hansen, Quellen, pp. 90-9. Nider himself was not, as has sometimes been suggested, in any way involved in the trial. He was not an inquisitor, and the trial had in any case taken place many years before he heard of it. Peter of Greyerz ceased to hold office in the Simmerthal in 1406.

*

Horace openly mocks the belief, in Ars poetica, lines 338-40.

**

The preceding canon in Regino’s book is taken from the fourth-century synod of Ancyra, and this has often led to the Canon Episcopi being ascribed to the same council. This is however mistaken. It is also mistaken to think that the text of the canon was known to Augustine; the treatise De spiritu et anima, where it is to be found, though frequently attributed to Augustine is in reality an eleventh-century work. There is no foundation, either, for the idea that a Roman synod of the year 367 dealt with the belief in nocturnal meetings under Diana’s leadership. The source is a life of Pope Damasus I (see C. Baronius, Annales Ecclesiastici vol. V, Lucca, 1739, pp. 535, 572 (ad an. 382 (para 20) and ad an. 384 (para 19)); but it gives no detail of the supposed synod. The text in Regino of Prüm is the earliest of the extant sources on this matter.

***

A practical joke recounted by Boccaccio has a very similar basis (Decameron, ninth story of the eighth day).

†

“nocticulam”, probably a slip for “noctilucam”, which was used by Classical authors as an epithet for the moon and therefore Diana; cf. Varro, De lingua latina, IV, 10; and Horace, Carmina, iv, 6, line 38.

††

A Classical equivalent for strigae.

*

i. e. from imprisonment.

**

i. e. informant.

***

The Lucerne material includes a case of a “wise woman” who, having failed to cure a man of impotence, was held to have caused it (p. 210 of the Hoffmann-Krayer material cited in the Notes).

I was delighted to hear, just as this book was being completed, that Dr Christina Larner, of Glasgow, had been awarded a grant by the Social Science Research Council to organize and carry out, in Scotland, a research project which should throw much light on this central problem.

*

Witches and medieval heretics are not the only cases where this theme has been woven into the stereotype of an outgroup. In my books The Pursuit of the Millennium and Warrant for Genocide I have argued that it has often been woven into the stereotype of the Jew. As late as 1913 a Russian Jew, Mendel Beiliss, was tried for killing a Christian boy so that the blood could be used in the unleavened bread which is ritually eaten at Passover. Within the present generation it was widely believed even amongst educated Chinese that European children stole Chinese children and shut them in a room to be devoured by rats — a barely disguised version of the same belief.