Part 44

The work on The Deceptions of Demons has been aptly compared to a torch thrown out into the darkness, which for a moment brightly illumes a small space and then disappears. It made a temporary sensation, and was welcomed by a few of the more enlightened spirits of the time; it saved the lives of some unfortunate women (being successfully quoted the very year after publication in defence of a young woman at Frankfort, who confessed she had flown through the air and had intercourse with the devil), and it marks the beginning of an open and persistent opposition to the witch mania. Spee also has a curious story showing the influence of Weyer’s book:

‘A great prince invited two priests to his table, both men of learning and piety. He asked one of them whether he thought it right to arrest and torture persons on the evidence of 10 or 12 witches. Might not the devil have deceived them in order to make rulers shed innocent blood, as certain learned men had lately argued, “thereby causing us pangs of conscience”? The priest stoutly maintained that these pangs were needless, for God would never allow the devil to bring innocent men to a shameful and horrible death in this way; and so he (the prince) might continue the witch trials as usual. He persisted in this, till the prince said, “I am sorry, my father, you have condemned yourself and cannot complain were I to order your immediate arrest, for no less than 15 persons have sworn you were with them at the witch dances”, and he produced the records of their trials in proof. Then the good man stood like butter in the sun in the dog-days, and had nothing more to say for himself.’ #/

But it had little effect on the superstition itself, which reached its height during the following half-century; and the author is compelled by his religious beliefs to admit so much that his position is hardly tenable. Indeed, his premisses had already been granted by the witch-hunters themselves. The jurist Molitor, for instance, admits that much witchcraft is imaginary and due to the deceptions of demons, but while the physician argues that these deceptions are rendered possible by disease, and are themselves largely of the nature of disease, so that the victims deserve pity and medical treatment rather than burning, the lawyer asserts that a person can only be so deceived by his free will, and therefore a woman who believes she has made a compact or had intercourse with the devil is as deserving of punishment as if she had actually done so.

Just over a century after the appearance of Weyer’s book (1664)

‘Sir Thomas Brown of Norwich, the famous physician of his time, was desired by my Lord Chief Baron to give his judgement [in a case of witchcraft]. And he declared that he was clearly of opinion That the Fits were natural, but heightened by the devil co-operating with the malice of the witches at whose instance he did the villanies. And he added, That in Denmark there had been lately a great Discovery of Witches, who used the very same way of afflicting persons by conveying pins into them.’

The jury ‘having Sir Thomas Brown’s Declaration about Denmark for their encouragement, in half an hour brought them in guilty.... They were hanged maintaining their innocence.’

Had Brown been better acquainted with The Deceptions of Demons he might have hesitated to make that ‘Declaration about Denmark’, but Weyer’s early opponent, Bishop Binsfeld, has no difficulties. Quoting Origen (in Matt. xvii. 15) he exclaims, ‘Physicians may say what they like, we who believe the Gospel hold that devils cause lunacy’ and many other diseases. But for a demon to cause disease or do other harm, two things are requisite, the permission of God and the free will of some malicious person, witch, or sorcerer. The physician, Weyer, has denied the possibility of a compact with the devil, but is easily refuted by Scripture and Church authority. Did not the devil try to make a compact with Christ Himself? Similarly he has no difficulty in showing that the Hebrew word for witch means much more than ‘poisoner’, and, given the almost universal beliefs of the age, it must be admitted that Brown and the bishop have the best of the argument.

In the opening chapter of his well-known work on rationalism, Lecky says that the decline of the belief in witchcraft ‘presents a spectacle not of argument and conflict, but of silent evanescence and decay’; it was ‘unargumentative and insensible’. Scot’s work ‘exercised no appreciable influence’, and, so far as the result was concerned, he, Weyer, and their like might as well have kept quiet and waited for the change to be effected by ‘what is called the spirit of the age’, that is, ‘a gradual insensible yet profound modification of the habits of thought’ due to ‘the progress of civilization’. This theory has been ably criticized elsewhere. The truth it contains seems to be that argument would not have sufficed to change public opinion about witchcraft, without the aid of changes in other matters, and especially the development and success of scientific investigation. Such discoveries as the motion of the earth and circulation of the blood, when generally accepted (which was not till late in the seventeenth century), showed that the learned as well as the vulgar might be utterly mistaken in important beliefs supported by apparently good evidence, and that scientific methods of attaining truth differed widely from those of the witch-hunters.

The progress of civilization by practically abolishing the use of torture would alone have immensely diminished the number of victims, and of those ‘confessions’ on which the belief was fed. To use military language, the witch mania was an ugly and formidable redoubt connected with other forts and entrenchments. It suffered somewhat from the bombardment by Weyer and Scot, but could only be finally demolished by a general advance of the forces of science and civilization. But if every one had trusted to ‘the spirit of the age’ rather than disturb his neighbours’ beliefs, we might still be burning our grandmothers.

Though born in what is now Holland and educated in France, German writers claim Weyer as their countryman and compare him with Martin Luther. The monk of Wittenberg is indeed a fine figure with his ‘Here stand I; I cannot otherwise, God help me!’ But he had half Germany behind him; both princes and populace were ready to protect him. Weyer stood practically alone, and if he escaped being burnt by jurists and theologians, had a fair chance of being lynched by an enraged mob as a sorcerer and protector of witches. There was little to save him from torture and death but the strength of mind of Duke William of Cleves, who came of an insane family and already showed signs of melancholia.

Weyer was happily spared such a trial of his fortitude, but none the less does he deserve our admiration as the chivalrous champion of womanhood, who first, with vizor up and lance in rest, greeted, alas! not, like the knights of legend, by prayers and blessings but by threats and imprecations, went forth to do open battle with the hideous monster which had so long tortured and slain the innocent and helpless.

MS. MARSH 379 fo. 73]

THE ‘TRACTATUS DE CAUSIS ET INDICIIS MORBORUM’

كتاب الاسباب والعلامات

ATTRIBUTED TO MAIMONIDES

By Reuben Levy

Among modern authorities on Arabian medicine, the opinion has been widely held that the position of Maimonides as a medical writer must depend mainly upon an unpublished work from his hand, known as the Tractatus de Causis et Indiciis Morborum. It is here sought to demonstrate that the Bodleian MS. (Marsh 379), hitherto regarded as containing this work, is in reality by another author, while the Paris MS. (Bibliothèque Nationale, Ancien Fonds 411), the only other alleged copy of the Tractatus de Causis et Indiciis Morborum, contains in fact no such work. Moreover, evidence will be adduced showing that it is not probable that Maimonides composed a treatise of this scope.

For their information concerning the Tractatus, the modern bibliographers evidently rely entirely on entries in the catalogues of the respective libraries. The 1739 Catalogue of Arabic and Hebrew MSS. in the Bibliothèque Nationale contains the following entry: ‘Codex bombycinus, Aleppo in bibliothecam Colbertinam anno 1673 illatus, quo continetur R. Mosis Maemonidae de morborum causis et illorum curatione tractatus, Arabice, charactere Hebraico.’ Careful examination of the manuscript disclosed the fact that it contained no fewer than four works of Maimonides, viz. on Poisons, on Asthma, the Tractatus de Regimine Sanitatis, and the Tractatus de Morbo Regis Aegypti, all bound together in confusion. All these are known to be by Maimonides, and there is nothing besides them in the volume.

There has always been a good deal of confusion about the works de Regimine Sanitatis and de Morbo Regis Aegypti. The former is variously known as de Regimine Sanitatis, de Cibo et Alimento, de Dietetica, ‘the letter to the Sultan’, or as ‘the Consultation concerning (the Sultan) Al Afḍal’. The latter also has a number of titles, such as de Causis Accidentium, de Morborum Causis et Curatione, and Responsum ad Regem Raqqa, in addition to its title of de Morbo Regis Aegypti. In 1514, in Venice the two treatises were printed together in Latin as one work.

Leclerc has made confusion worse confounded by saying that ‘ce que l’on a désigné sous les titres, De Morbo Regis Aegypti, De Causis Accidentium, De Causis et Indiciis Morborum, De Cibo et Alimento, ne sont autre chose que tout ou partie du même ouvrage’. No doubt he was led into making this statement partly by the fact that Wüstenfeld gives the title of de Causis et Indiciis Morborum both to the Bibliothèque Nationale MS. (which Leclerc knew as de Causis Accidentium) and to the Bodley MS.

The entry concerning the latter in Uri’s Bodleian Catalogue of 1787 reads as follows:

‘Codex bombycinus, anno Hegirae 765, Christi 1363 exaratus, folia 116 implens. Comprehendit succinctum de omnium corporis humani morborum causis, signis et remediis tractatum ab Ibn Hobaish Hierosolymitano ex Hebraica lingua in Arabicam conversum, cui sectiones sex supra centum sunt. Initium fit a morbis capitis; finis in elephantiasi. Composuit Musa Ben Maimun Alcortubi, Israelita. [Marsh 379.]’

The MS. bears upon one of its pages the title

هذا كتاب الاسباب والعلامات الحكيم ’موسى بن ميمون القرطبي الاسرايلي

‘This is the book of the causes and symptoms, by the Doctor Mûsa ibn Maimûn the Cordovan, the Israelite.’ (Plate XLI.)

As a matter of fact it is no such thing. This title, together with an extra title-page and colophon in the same hand, is a much later addition to the MS., which also has a fragment of some other medical work--at present unidentified--bound up with it. The folios of the MS. which deal with the Tractatus have been bound together in extreme disorder, but examination of them has shown that they really form a fragment of the second book of ‫المختار قي الطبّ‬, the Delectus de Medicina, by ‫مهذب الدين ابو الحسن على بن احهد البغدادي‬, Muhaḏḏib ed Din Abu’l Hasan Ali Ibn Aḥmad of Bagdad.

Ibn Abi ‛Uṣaibia (1203-1269) gives a life of this writer and a list of his works, which includes the Delectus de Medicina. According to him, Muhaḏḏib ed Din was born at Bagdad in A.H. 515 (= A.D. 1121), and after studying medicine and philosophy settled at Mosul. Later he became the physician of the Shah Arman, chieftain of Khalāt on Lake Van in Armenia, in whose service he amassed great wealth. He completed the Delectus at Mosul in the year A.H. 560 (= A.D. 1164), and died there in A.H. 610 (= A.D. 1213), with the reputation of being first physician of his time.

Another fragment of the same work of Muhaḏḏib ed Din, which includes most of the contents of the Bodleian MS., besides a good deal of material which has been lost from the latter, exists in the British Museum. The Leyden Library contains a unique copy of the work in three books. This is claimed to be complete by the Catalogue of the library, although Bar Hebraeus [1226-1286]--Catholicus of the Jacobite (Monophysite) Church--says that the work ran into four parts. The three books of the Leyden MS. treat (i) of generalities (i.e. Anatomy, Physiology, and the general causes of disease), (ii) of medicaments, and (iii) of particular diseases and their treatment.