Sometimes, as in the affair of the nuns of Loudon, there seems every
reason to suspect a conspiracy; but I am not quite ready to say that
Grandier was the only victim, and that some of the energumens were not
unconscious tools in the hands of priestcraft and revenge. One thing is
certain: that in the dioceses of humanely sceptical prelates the cases of
possession were sporadic only, and either cured, or at least hindered
from becoming epidemic, by episcopal mandate. Cardinal Mazarin, when
Papal vice-legate at Avignon, made an end of the trade of exorcism within
his government.
But scepticism, down to the beginning of the eighteenth century, was the
exception. Undoubting and often fanatical belief was the rule. It is easy
enough to be astonished at it, still easier to misapprehend it. How could
sane men have been deceived by such nursery-tales? Still more, how could
they have suffered themselves, on what seems to us such puerile evidence,
to consent to such atrocious cruelties, nay, to urge them on? As to the
belief, we should remember that the human mind, when it sails by _dead
reckoning_, without the possibility of a fresh observation, perhaps
without the instruments necessary to take one, will sometimes bring up in
very strange latitudes.
Pages:
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187