days of the Salem persecution down to the "camp-meetings" of the present time.[1]
At various times, from the days of St. Agobard of Lyons through the Reformation period, protests had been made by thoughtful men against this system. Medicine had made some advance toward a better view, but the theological torrent had generally overwhelmed all who supported a scientific treatment. At last, toward the end of the sixteenth century, two men made a beginning of a much more serious attack upon this venerable superstition. The revival of learning and the impulse to thought on material matters given during the "age of discovery" undoubtedly produced an atmosphere which made the work of these men possible. In the year 1563, in the midst of demonstrations of demoniacal possession by the most eminent theologians and judges—who sat in their robes and looked wise, while women, shrieking, praying, and blaspheming, were put to the torture—a man arose who dared to protest effectively that some of the persons thus charged might be simply insane, and this man was John Wier, of Cleves.
His protest does not at this day strike us as particularly bold. In his books, "De Prestigiis Dæmonum" and "De Lamiis," he did his best not to offend religious or theological susceptibilities, but he felt obliged to tell certain truths, to call attention to the mingled fraud and delusion of those who claimed to be bewitched, and to point out that it was often not their accusers but the alleged witches themselves who were really ailing, and he urged that these be brought first of all to a physician.
His book was at once attacked by the most eminent theologians. One of the greatest men of genius of his time, John Bodin, also wrote with especial power against it, and by a plentiful use of Scriptural texts gained, to all appearance, a complete victory: superstition seemed fastened upon Europe for a thousand years more. But skepticism was in the air, and, about a quarter of a century after the publication of Wier's book, there were published in France the essays of a man, by no means so noble, but of far greater genius—Michel de Montaigne. The general skepticism which his work promoted among the French people did much to strengthen an atmosphere in which the belief in witchcraft and demoniacal possession must inevitably wither. But this process, though real, was hidden, and the victory still seemed on the theological side.
The development of the new truth and its struggle against the old error still went on. In Holland, Balthazar Bekker wrote his book against the worst forms of the superstition, and attempted to help the scientific side by a text from the Second Epistle of St.
- ↑ This branch of the subject will be discussed more at length in a future chapter.
