But When The Body
Is Despised And Tormented The Mind Loses Its Equilibrium, And When That
Happens Nonsense May Assume A Sinister Shape.
We have seen it in
England, where, during the ascetic movement of Puritanism, more witches
were burnt than in the whole period before and after.
The virus of asceticism entered South Italy from three principal
sources. From early ages the country had stood in commercial relations
with the valley of the Nile; and even as its black magic is largely
tinged with Egyptian practices, so its magic of the white kind - its
saintly legends - bear the impress of the self-macerations and perverted
life-theories of those desert-lunatics who called themselves Christians.
[Footnote: These ascetics were here before Christianity (see Philo
Judaeus); in fact, there is not a single element in the new faith which
had not been independently developed by the pagans, many of whom, like
Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, were ripe for the most abject
self-abasement.] But this Orientalism fell at first upon unfruitful
soil; the Vatican was yet wavering, and Hellenic notions of
conduct still survived. It received a further rebuff at the hands of men
like Benedict, who set up sounder ideals of holiness, introducing a
gleam of sanity even in that insanest of institutions - the herding
together of idle men to the glory of God.
But things became more centralized as the Papacy gainedground. The
strong Christian, the independent ruler or warrior or builder saint, was
tolerated only if he conformed to its precepts; and the inauspicious
rise of subservient ascetic orders like the Franciscans and Dominicans,
who quickly invaded the fair regions of the south, gave an evil tone to
their Christianity.
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