Part 38

This deception was, however, practised in times more remote than the period to which we have alluded. There was anciently an annual festival held on Mount Soracte, in Etruria, at which certain people called Hirpi, used to walk over live embers, for which performance they were allowed some peculiar privileges by the Roman senate; the same feat was achieved by women at the temple of Diana, at Castabala, in Cappadocia; and allusion is even made, in the Antigone of the Grecian poet Sophocles, who wrote nearly five centuries anterior to our æra, to the very species of Ordeal which has been just noticed.

In modern times, much notice has been excited by jugglers, who practised deceptions by fire. Towards the end of the seventeenth century, one Richardson, an Englishman, excited great astonishment at Paris, by pretending to chew burning coals and to swallow melted lead, with many other equally extraordinary feats; some of which are thus recorded in Evelyn’s diary:—“October the 8th, 1672, took leave of my Lady Sunderland, who was going to the Hague to my Lord, now ambassador there. She made me stay dinner at Leicester House, and afterwards sent for Richardson, the famous fire-eater. He, before us, devoured brimstone on glowing coals, chewing and swallowing them. He melted a beere glasse and eate it quite up; then taking a live coal on his tongue, he put on it a raw oyster; the coal was blowne on with bellows till it flamed and sparkled in his mouth, and so remained until the oyster was quite boiled; then he melted pitch and wax with sulphur, which he dranke down as it flamed.” Many of our readers must recollect Signora Girardelli; and Miss Rogers, the American fire-eater, who was announced as having entered a heated oven with a leg of mutton in her hand, and having remained there until it was baked! This young lady exhibited all the tricks usually performed by such persons; she washed her hands in boiling oil, and then suffered aquafortis to be poured over them; but below the oil, there, no doubt, was a quantity of water, the air from which, when heated, forcing itself through the supernatant oil, gave it the appearance of boiling, when in reality its temperature probably did not exceed a hundred degrees of Fahrenheit; and when the hands were once well coated with oil, there was no danger from the aquafortis. She had also a ladle of melted lead, out of which she appeared to take a little with a spoon and pour into her mouth, and then to return in the shape of a solid lump; but in pretending to take the lead into the spoon, it was, in fact, quicksilver that was received, through a dexterous contrivance in the ladle, and this she swallowed, the solid lead having been previously placed in her mouth. She, besides, repeatedly placed her foot on a bar of hot iron; but the rapidity with which she removed it scarcely allowed time to injure the most delicate skin, even had it not been previously prepared: the cuticle of the hands and of the soles of the feet may, however, be easily rendered sufficiently callous to support a longer experiment. This effect will be produced if it be frequently punctured, or injured by being in continual contact with hard substances; repeatedly moistening it with spirit of vitriol will also at length render it horny and insensible; and thus it is not uncommon to see the labourers at copper-works take the melted ore into their hands.

The exhibition of cups and balls is of great antiquity, and depends entirely on manual dexterity. It is mentioned in the works of various ancient authors, one of whom relates the astonishment of a countryman, who, on first witnessing the performance, exclaimed, “that it was well he had no such animal on his farm, for under such hands no doubt all his property would soon disappear.”

Feats of strength have been common to all countries in every age. More than fifteen hundred years ago, there were persons who excited astonishment by the since ordinary exhibition of supporting vast weights upon the breast, and of even suffering iron to be forged on an anvil placed upon it. But these were mere tricks: to support the former, it is only necessary to place the body in such a position, with the shoulders and feet resting against some support, as that it shall form an arch; and as for the latter, if the anvil be large and the hammer small, the stroke will scarcely be felt; for the action and reaction being equal and reciprocal, an anvil of two hundred pounds weight will resist the stroke of a hammer of two pounds, wielded with the force of one hundred pounds, or of four pounds with the impetus of fifty, without injury to the body.

In the beginning of the seventeenth century, there was a German, who travelled over Europe under the appropriate name of Sampson, and who rendered himself celebrated by the uncommon strength which he displayed: among many other extraordinary feats, it is said, that he could so fix himself between two posts, as that two or even more horses, could not draw him from his position. The same exploit was attempted not many years back, in this country, by a person who placed himself with his feet resting in a horizontal posture against a strong bar; only one horse was employed, and the man was enabled to resist the entire force of the animal, until both his thigh bones suddenly snapped asunder. Another had the temerity to try the same experiment, and, in like manner, broke both his legs. These instances clearly show, that apparent strength is often nothing more than a judicious application of the mechanical powers to the human frame; and from the catastrophe attending the two latter may be deduced the anatomical fact, that the sinews of the arms possess a greater power of resistance than the largest bones of the body.

Feats of tumbling, rope dancing, and horsemanship, were practised at very early periods. Xenophon mentions a female dancer at Athens, who wrote and read while standing on a wheel which revolved with the greatest velocity; but the manner in which this was performed is not explained. Juvenal seems also to have alluded to a similar performance at Rome, in that passage where he says:

“An magis oblectant animum jactata petauro, Corpora quique solent rectum descendere funem, Quam tu.” Sat. xiv. v. 265.

which, however, also wants explanation, although one of his most judicious translators has rendered it

——“The man who springs Light through the hoop, and on the tight-rope swings.” Gifford.

Addison tells us, that, in his travels through Italy, he witnessed an annual exhibition that is peculiar to the Venetians. “A set of artisans, by the help of poles, which they laid across each others’ shoulders, built themselves up in a kind of pyramid; so that you saw a pile of men in the air, of four or five rows, rising one above another. The weight was so equally distributed that every man was well able to bear his part of it; the stories, if they might be so called, growing less and less as they advanced higher and higher. A little boy presented the top of the pyramid, who, after a short space, leaped off, with a great deal of dexterity, into the arms of one who caught him at the bottom.” But this was only the revival of an ancient feat, which, as we learn from the following verses of the poet Claudian, was formerly practised among the Romans:—

“Vel qui mare arrum sese jaculantur in auras, Corporaque adificant celeri cressentia nexu, Queram compositam puer augmentatus in arcem Emicat, et vinctas plantæ, vel eruribus hærens, Pendulo librato figit vestigia sulta.” De Pr. et Obyb. Cono.

“Men pil’d on men, with active leaps arise, And build the breathing fabric to the skies; A sprightly youth above the topmast row Paints the tall pyramid, and crowns the show.” Addison.

In the thirteenth century, these performances were introduced at Constantinople, by a strolling company from Egypt, who afterwards travelled to Rome, and thence through great part of Europe. They could stand in various postures on horses while at full speed, and both mount and dismount without stopping them; and their rope-dancers sometimes extended the rope on which they poised themselves between the masts of ships.

It appears also that the ancients taught animals to perform many tricks that are still exhibited, and some even yet more extraordinary. In the year 543, a learned dog was shown at the Byzantine court, which not only selected, and returned to the several owners, the rings and ornaments of the spectators, which were thrown together before him, but on being asked his opinion respecting the character of some of the females who were present, he expressed it by signs at once so significant and correct, that the people were persuaded he possessed the spirit of divination. In the reign of Galba, an elephant was exhibited at Rome which walked upon a rope stretched across the theatre; and such was the confidence reposed in his dexterity, that a person was mounted on him while he performed the feat.

It must require the exercise not alone of vast patience, but also of extraordinary cruelty, mingled perhaps with much kindness, to train animals to exhibit a degree of intelligence approaching to that of human beings. It is said that bears are taught to dance by being placed in a den with a floor of heated iron: the animal, endeavouring to avoid the smart to which his paws are thus exposed, rears himself on his hind legs, and alternately raises them with the utmost rapidity, during all which time a flageolet is played to him; and after this lesson has been frequently repeated, he becomes so impressed with the associated recollection of the music and the pain, that, whenever he hears the same tune, he instinctively recurs to the same efforts, in order to escape the fancied danger.

In the middle of the last century, there was an Englishman, named Wildman, who excited great attention by the possession of a secret through the means of which he enticed bees to follow him, and to settle on his person without stinging him. A similar circumstance is related in Francis Bruce’s voyage to Africa in 1698, in which mention is made of a man who was constantly surrounded by a swarm of these insects, and who had thence obtained the title of “King of the bees.”

Only one instance is recorded in ancient history of the art of supplying the deficiency of hands by the use of toes; and that is of an Indian slave belonging to the emperor Augustus, who, being without arms, could, notwithstanding, wield a bow and arrows and put a trumpet to his mouth with his feet.

Of late years some persons have exhibited themselves in the character of stone-eaters; but although these are to be considered as mere jugglers, yet it would appear that there have been others who actually possessed the faculty of digesting similar substances. Of the instances on record we shall merely select one, from the “Dictionnaire Physique,” of father Paulian:—“The beginning of May 1760, there was brought to Avignon a true lithophagus, or stone-eater, who had been found, about three years before that time, in a northern island, by the crew of a Dutch ship. He not only swallowed flints of an inch and a half long, a full inch broad, and half an inch thick, but such stones as he could reduce to powder, such as marble, pebbles, &c., he made up into paste, which was to him a most agreeable and wholesome food. I examined this man with all the attention I possibly could; I found his gullet very large, his teeth exceedingly strong, his saliva very corrosive, and his stomach lower than ordinary, which I imputed to the vast quantity of flints he had swallowed, being about five and twenty, one day with another. His keeper made him eat raw flesh with the stones, but could never induce him to swallow bread; he would, however, drink water, wine, and brandy, which last liquor appeared to afford him infinite pleasure. He usually slept twelve hours a day, sitting on the ground, with one knee over the other, and his chin resting on it; and when not asleep he passed the greater part of his time in smoking.” In the year 1802, there was a Frenchman, who, indeed, did not profess to eat stones, but who publicly devoured at the amphitheatre, in the city of Lisbon, a side of raw mutton, with a rabbit and a fowl, both alive: he advertised a repetition of the experiment, with the addition of a live cat; but the magistrates, deeming the exhibition too brutal for the public eye, would not again allow its performance. Notwithstanding the public display of this man, and the extraordinary fact of his having appeared to swallow living animals, may rank him in the class of jugglers, it is still probable that he was no impostor; for instances of such uncommon powers of the stomach are by no means rare, and among others we read of another Frenchman who was in the constant habit, as an amateur, of eating cats alive, and was even strongly suspected of having devoured a child.

LEGENDS, &c. MIRACLES, &c.

A Legend was originally a book used in the old Romish churches, containing the lessons that were to be read in divine service. Hence also the lives of saints and martyrs came to be called legends, because chapters were read out of them at matins, and in the refectories of the religious houses. The GOLDEN LEGEND is a collection of the lives of the Saints, compiled by James De Varasse, better known by the Latin name of J. De Veragine, Vicar-General of the Dominicans, and afterwards Bishop of Genoa, who died in 1298. It was received into the church with the most enthusiastic applause, which it maintained for 200 years; but, in fact, it is so full of ridiculous and absurd romantic monstrosities, that the Romanists themselves are now generally ashamed of it. On this very account alone the word Legend got into general disrepute.

The following is stated to be the origin of those ecclesiastical histories entitled Legends:—The professors in rhetoric, before colleges were established in the monasteries where the schools were held, frequently gave their pupils the life of some saint for a trial of their talent at amplification. The students, being constantly at a loss to furnish out their pages, invented most of these wonderful adventures. Jortin observes, that the Christians used to collect out of Ovid, Livy, and other pagan poets and historians, the miracles and portents, so found there, and accommodated them to their own monks and saints. The good fathers of that age, whose simplicity was not inferior to their devotion, were so delighted with these flowers of rhetoric, that they were induced to make a collection of these miraculous compositions; not imagining that, at some distant period, they would become matters of faith. Yet when James De Veragine, Peter Nadal, and Peter Ribadeneira, wrote the Lives of the Saints, they sought for the materials in the libraries of these monasteries; and, awakening from the dust the manuscripts of amplification, imagined they made an invaluable present to the world, by laying before them these voluminous absurdities. The people received these pious fictions with all imaginable simplicity; and as the book is adorned with a number of cuts, these miracles were perfectly intelligible to their eyes. Fleury, Tillemont, Baillet, Launoi, and Ballendus, cleared away much of the rubbish. The enviable title of Golden Legend, by which James De Veragine called his work, has been disputed; iron or lead might more aptly express the character of this folio.

The monks, when the world became more critical in their reading, gave a graver turn to their narratives, and became more penurious of their absurdities. The faithful Catholic contends that the line of tradition has been preserved unbroken; notwithstanding that the originals were lost in the general wreck of literature from the barbarians, or came down in a most imperfect state. Baronius has given the lives of many apocryphal saints; for instance, of a Saint Xenoris, whom he calls a Martyr of Antioch; but it appears that Baronius having read this work in Chrysostom, which signifies a couple or pair, he mistook it for the name of a saint, and continued to give the most authentic biography of a saint who never existed! The Catholics confess this sort of blunder is not uncommon, but then it is only fools who laugh!

As a specimen of the happier inventions, one is given, embellished by the diction of Gibbon the historian.

“Among the insipid legends of ecclesiastical history, I am tempted to distinguish the memorable fable of the Seven Sleepers, whose imaginary date corresponds with the reign of the younger Theodosius, and the conquest of Africa by the Vandals. When the emperor Decius persecuted the Christians, seven noble youths of Ephesus concealed themselves in a spacious cavern on the side of an adjacent mountain, where they were doomed to perish by the tyrant, who gave orders that the entrance should be firmly secured by a pile of stones. They immediately fell into a deep slumber, which was miraculously prolonged without injuring the powers of life, during a period of one hundred and eighty-seven years. At the end of that time the slaves of Adolius, to whom the inheritance of the mountain had descended, removed the stones, to supply materials for some rustic edifice. The light of the sun darted into the cavern, and the Seven Sleepers were permitted to awake: after a slumber, as they thought, of a few hours, they were pressed by the calls of hunger; and resolved that Jamblichus, one of their number, should secretly return to the city to purchase bread for the use of his companions. The youth, if we may still employ that appellation, could no longer recognise the once familiar aspect of his native country; and his surprise was increased by the appearance of a large cross, triumphantly erected over the principal gate of Ephesus. His singular dress, and obsolete language, confounded the baker, to whom he offered an ancient medal of Decius as the current coin of the empire; and Jamblichus, on suspicion of a secret treasure, was dragged before the judge. Their mutual inquiries produced the amazing discovery that two centuries were almost elapsed since Jamblichus and his friends had escaped from the rage of a pagan tyrant. The bishop of Ephesus, the clergy, the magistrates, the people, and, it is said, the emperor Theodosius himself, hastened to visit the cavern of the Seven Sleepers; who bestowed their benediction, related their story, and at the same instant peaceably expired.

“This popular tale Mahomet learned when he drove his camels to the fairs of Syria; and he has introduced it, as a divine revelation, into the Koran.” The same story has been adopted and adorned, by the natives from Bengal to Africa, who profess the Mahometan religion.

These monks imagined that holiness was often proportioned to a saint’s filthiness. St. Ignatius delighted, say they, to appear abroad with old dirty shoes; he never used a comb, but suffered his hair to run into clots, and religiously abstained from paring his nails. One saint attained to such a pitch of piety as to have near three hundred patches on his breeches; which, after his death, were exhibited in public as a stimulus to imitate such a holy life. St. Francis discovered, by certain experience, that the devil was frightened away by similar kinds of unmentionables; but was animated by clean clothing to tempt and seduce the wearers; and one of their heroes declares that the purest souls are in the dirtiest bodies. On this subject a story is told by them which may not be very agreeable to fastidious delicacy. Brother Juniper was a gentleman perfectly pious in this principle; indeed so great was his merit in this species of mortification, that a brother declared he could always nose Brother Juniper when within a mile of the monastery, provided he was at the due point. Once, when the blessed Juniper, for he was no saint, was a guest, his host, proud of the honour of entertaining so pious a personage, the intimate friend of St. Francis, provided an excellent bed and the finest sheets. Brother abhorred such luxury; and this too evidently appeared after his sudden departure in the morning, unknown to his kind host. The great Juniper did this, says his biographer, (having told us what he did) not so much from his habitual inclinations for which he was so justly celebrated, as from his excessive piety, and as much as he could to mortify worldly pride, and to shew how a true saint despised clean sheets.

Among other grotesque miracles we find, in the life of St. Francis, that he preached a sermon in a desert, but he soon collected an immense audience. The birds shrilly warbled to every sentence, and stretched out their necks, opened their beaks, and when he finished, dispersed with a holy rapture into four companies, to report his sermon to all the birds of the universe. A grasshopper remained a week with St. Francis during the absence of the Virgin Mary, and fastened on his head. He grew so companionable with a nightingale, that when a nest of swallows began to twitter, he hushed them, by desiring them not to tittle tattle of his sister the nightingale. Attacked by a wolf, with only the sign manual of the cross, he held a long dialogue with his rabid assailant, till the wolf, meek as a lap-dog, stretched his paws in the hands of the saint, followed him through towns, and became half a Christian. This same St. Francis had such a detestation of the good things of this world, that he would never suffer his followers to touch money. A friar having placed some money in a window collected at the altar, he observed him to take it in his mouth and throw it on the dung of an ass! St. Phillip Nerius was such an admirer of poverty that he frequently prayed God would bring him to that state as to stand in need of a penny, and find none that would give him one! But St. Macaire was so shocked at having killed a louse that he endured seven years of penitence among the thorns and briars of a forest.

The following miraculous incident is given respecting two pious maidens. The night of the Nativity of Christ, after the first mass, they both retired into a solitary spot of their nunnery till the second mass was rung. One asked the other, “why do you want two cushions, when I have only one?” The other replied, “I would place it between us, for the child Jesus; as the Evangelist says, “Where there are two or three persons assembled I am in the midst of them.”—This being done, they sat down, feeling a most lively pleasure at their fancy; and there they remained from the nativity of Christ to that of John the Baptist; but this great interval of time passed with these saintly maidens, as two hours would appear to others. The abbess and her nuns were alarmed at their absence, for no one could give any account of them. On the eve of St. John, a cowherd passing by them, beheld a beautiful child seated on a cushion between this pair of run-away nuns. He hastened to the abbess with news of this stray sheep, who saw this lovely child playfully seated between these nymphs, who, with blushing countenances, enquired if the second bell had already rung? Both parties were equally astonished to find our young devotees had been there since the birth of Christ to that of John the Baptist. The abbess inquired after the child who sat between them: they solemnly declared they saw no child between them, and persisted in their story.”