The names of several saints were inseparably bound up with divers disorders, and even served to designate them. Thus various cutaneous diseases were called Saint Anthony’s evil. Gout went by the name of Saint Maur’s evil. The terrors of the plague called for more than one saintly protector; Saint Sebastian, Saint Roch, Saint Giles, Saint Christopher, Saint Valentine, Saint Adrian, were all honoured in this capacity by offices, processions and fraternities. Now here lurked another menace to the purity of the faith. As soon as the thought of the disease, charged with feelings of horror and fear, presented itself to the mind, the thought of the saint sprang up at the same instant. How easily, then, did the saint himself become the object of this fear, so that to him was ascribed the heavenly wrath that unchained the scourge. Instead of unfathomable divine justice, it was the anger of the saint which seemed the cause of the evil and required to be appeased. Since he healed the evil, why should he not be its author? On these lines the transition from Christian ethic to heathen magic was only too easy. The Church could not be held responsible, unless we are to blame her carelessness regarding the adulteration of the pure doctrine in the minds of the ignorant.
There are numerous testimonies to show that the people sometimes really regarded certain saints as the authors of disorders, though it would be hardly fair to consider as such those oaths which almost attributed to Saint Anthony the part of an evil fire-demon. “Que Saint Antoine me arde” (May Saint Anthony burn me!), “Saint Antoine arde le tripot,” “Saint Antoine arde la monture” (Saint Anthony burn the brothel! Saint Anthony burn the beast!)—these are lines by Coquillart. So also Deschamps makes some poor fellow say:
“Saint Antoine me vent trop chier
Son mal, le feu ou corps me boute;”[1]
and thus apostrophizes a gouty beggar: “You cannot walk? All the better, you save the toll: Saint Mor ne te fera fremir” (Saint Maur will not make you tremble).
Robert Gaguin, who was not at all hostile to the veneration
- ↑ Saint Anthony sells me his evil all too dear, He stokes the fire in my body.
