In Roman Catholic countries superstition frequently culminates in miracle-working images, winking madonnas, and apparitions resembling the Virgin Mary. For not a few delusions the priests and nuns are responsible. We are not speaking without authority. The Very Rev. Father A. Vincent Jandel, General of the Dominican Order, addressed from Rome a circular letter in 1870 to[Pg 630] all the provincials of his order, giving an account of what he considered a wonderful occurrence that took place at Soriano, in Calabria. There is at Soriano a celebrated Sanctuary of St. Dominic, and in the church an ancient image of that saint, life-size, carved in wood, held in high veneration. On the 15th of September of that year, which is its festa, another image of wood is carried processionally with much pomp. Thirty persons, who had remained after the conclusion of the solemnity to pray before the ancient image, suddenly perceived it to move, as if alive. It came forward, then retreated, and turned towards the image of the Virgin of the Holy Rosary. The cry of "St. Dominic! St. Dominic! A miracle! a miracle!" burst from every lip. The wonderful news sped like lightning through the town. Men and women left their occupations to crowd to the sanctuary; and soon no fewer than two thousand persons had witnessed the strange movements, which continued for about an hour and a half, amidst prayers, tears, and acclamations.

To the great joy of the monks of the Holy Trinity, in 1871, two madonnas, in an obscure, out-of-the-way church of St. Grisogono, in Trastevere, melted multitudes to tears by the miraculous movements and expressions of their eyes. The most remarkable in its exercises was an oil painting in the interior of the church. To such a height did the excitement reach amongst the crowd privileged to witness it, that the friars judged it prudent to bring its performances to a close by removing it from the church, and shutting it up in a press in the convent. The second madonna is a fresco in the open piazza as one approaches the church and convent. It is a recent painting, of life-size, with eyes lowered on the spectators looking at it from below, in such a manner that the movements of the pupils (if movements there be) should be very sensible. The madonna is but one of three figures on the fresco. On her right is John the Baptist in the[Pg 631] dress of the monks of the establishment, and on the left Pio Nono as Pontiff. This madonna began to move its eyes as soon as its companion was locked up, and the wonder lasted for many days.

In the same year (1871) the Rev. Father Ubald sent a letter to a colleague, the following passages of which were quoted in the Bulletin Religieux of Versailles:—"I arrive from Belgium; this time I have seen Louise Lateau. I do not know whether you ever heard of her, but at present the name is in everybody's mouth in Belgium and Northern France. Louise Lateau is a girl of 21, who carries the sacred stigmata of the Passion, and every week on Friday is in a state of profound ecstacy. Dr. Lefevre, professor of medicine at the University of Louvain, has published a medical examination, in which he says: 'The flow of blood begins in the night (from Thursday to Friday generally), between midnight and one o'clock.' It took place for the first time on the 24th April 1868, by her losing blood on the left side of her chest. On the Friday following, hemorrhage was observed at the same place, and, moreover, blood oozed out from the top or instep of the foot. On the third Friday—viz. the 8th May—blood came out at the left side and from the feet during the night. Towards nine in the morning blood rushed out copiously from both hands, back and palm. Finally, on the 27th September, a percolation of blood also set in on the forehead, as if the young girl had been crowned with thorns. Since then the marvellous phenomenon never missed a Friday, except once or twice. Doctors affirm that Louise thus loses from five to ten ounces of blood every Friday. In spite of this, and albeit she has not taken food for the last six months, she has, I assure you, quite ruddy cheeks (teint vermeil), and seems to enjoy capital health (sante florissant)."

The correspondent of the Paris Ultramontane paper L'Univers wrote from the Lourdes in 1876: "I have just[Pg 632] been witness of a marvel, of which I hasten to send you an account. Several other miracles have taken place within the last couple of days, but I have said nothing about them, as they did not come under my own observation. However, I can assure you of the accuracy of the following statement:—Madeleine Lansereau, aged 33 years, broke one of her legs about 19 years ago, and became lame, her left leg being fearfully twisted. She came to Lourdes with the pilgrimage from Picardy, and was radically cured at the moment the Papal Nuncio sent to crown the Holy Virgin was saying the paternoster in the mass he was celebrating in the grotto. She told the crowd that, having walked into the little pool, a lively internal emotion took possession of her, and she cried out, 'I am cured! I am cured!' Her companions wept with joy and admiration at the miracle. When they asked her what she had done for that great grace, her simple reply was, 'I have prayed to St. Radogonde and St. Joseph, but especially to the Holy Virgin, and now I am cured.' While she was speaking, the Bishop of Poictiers came and said, 'Madeleine, thank the Holy Virgin fervently.'"

The Rev. Canon Tandy, D.D., writing from St. Paul's Convent, Birmingham, in 1871, to a reverend brother, informs him, in pious phraseology, that two nuns had been suddenly cured of serious disorders of long standing by drinking a bottle of water from Lourdes. In acknowledgment of the favours shown by our Lady of Lourdes, the Te Deum was recited.

A deaf and dumb girl from Blois was made whole at Lourdes a few years ago by the Virgin Mary.

Not long since the Bishop of Laval wrote a pastoral letter on the subject of the miraculous appearance of the Virgin to four children in a village in Mayence, and was so convinced of the reality of the fact that he decided to erect a chapel in honour of Mary on the ground upon which she had condescended to appear.

[Pg 633]Recently there might be seen emerging from a church at Dieppe, on a Saturday morning, a religious procession, headed by a person carrying a silver processional cross, and accompanied by choristers singing penitential psalms, proceeding to the eastern pier of the harbour to perform a curious Roman Catholic ceremony. Taking up a position beside the rolling water, the priests prayed for the success of the fishing, then said a paternoster, while the people knelt; then a priest, dipping a brush in holy water (which was carried in a swinging silver vase), sprinkled three times the salt water of the ocean with the holy fluid, making the sign of the cross with the brush at the words, Seo sibera nos a malo. Then came a collect of repose for the souls of the dead whose bodies had not been recovered from the depths of the sea; and, all being over, the priests, with the choristers, people, and cross-bearers, returned, chanting their psalms to the church, where the high mass of the festival of St. Luke was celebrated.

This ceremony at Dieppe reminds one of the well-known annual ceremony in Russia, of blessing the Neva in presence of the Czar and other members of the Imperial Family; but, as the performance has been described by numerous writers, we shall not further refer to it.

The Marquis of Segur, a zealous Catholic, relates that, in 1866, when the Pope was seriously ill, Mdlle. Leautard, a lady of Marseilles, resolved to offer up her life in place of his Holiness, and sought his permission to do so. The Pope, after long silence, placed his hand on her head, and said, "Go, my daughter, and do what the Spirit of God has suggested to you." Next day, on receiving the consecrated wafer, the lady fervently expressed her desire to die, and was immediately seized with a sharp pain, which carried her off three days afterwards. The Pope, on hearing of her death, exclaimed, "So soon accepted!" The Marquis believes this sacrifice accounted for the Pope's prolonged life.

[Pg 634]A Hohenzollern legend was brought to mind in Germany through a serious illness of the Emperor, who, however, fortunately recovered, and continues to adorn his exalted position. The legend runs thus:—

Many years ago there was a Hohenzollern Princess (a widow with two children), who fell in love with a foreign Prince—rich, handsome, and brave. She sent him a proposition of marriage; but the Prince declined her suit, explaining that "four eyes" stood between him and acceptance. He referred to his parents, whose consent he could not obtain. But the Princess understood him to refer to the four eyes of her two children—to his unwillingness, in fact, to become a stepfather. So she suffocated the infant obstacles, and wrote to her lover that the way was clear. He was stricken with horror at the cruel deed, and died cursing her bloodthirsty rashness. The Princess, in her turn, became overwhelmed with remorse. After lingering a day or two in indescribable anguish, she too died, and was buried under the old castle at Berlin; but not to rest quietly in her unhappy grave. At rare intervals she appears at midnight, clad in white, gliding, ghost like, about the castle; and the apparition always forebodes the death of some member of the Hohenzollern family. The white lady has been seen, we are assured, three times within about a year—once just before the death of Prince Albrecht; again, to announce the end of Prince Adalbert; and the last time while Queen Elizabeth lay on her deathbed.

We have shown that the great Napoleon Bonaparte was superstitious in the highest degree; and so was his mother before him. Both believed in fate or destiny. She was surrounded by luxury and pomp; but her solicitude about her son, and the belief that his glory could not last, rendered her miserable. The divorce of Josephine, the retreat from Russia, the exile to Elba, the final overthrow at Waterloo, and the banishment to St. Helena, were[Pg 635] heavy blows; but she was prepared for them. While the sun of the Emperor's fortunes blazed in the zenith, she shivered under the shadow of her fear; and her fear proved prophetic. She witnessed the downfall of every one of her children; but she bore her adversity with dignity and resignation, and died in her eighty-seventh year.

Indeed not only were Napoleon and his mother superstitious, but the whole Bonaparte family were believers in fate. Napoleon III. says in his will, "With regard to my son" (the late Prince Imperial, who perished at the hands of Zulus), "let him keep, as a talisman, the seal attached to my watch." True to the traditions of his family, the young Prince put trust in amulets. When the Prince's body was discovered (here we have a double case of superstition), it lay stripped of all its clothing, but there were left with the body a locket and a gold amulet, admittedly the seal bequeathed to him by his Imperial father, as the Zulus were afraid they were charms—articles they stand in great dread of.

Thinking of Prince Napoleon's untimely death, brings the Zulu character to remembrance. Among the Zulus a belief prevails that kindly and angry spirits hover around them—the former endeavouring to do them good; the latter trying to do them harm. Zulus also believe in divine smoke, witchcraft, and dreams. Whenever a charge of witchcraft is made against any one, no mercy is shown him. Such an accusation affords a pretext to a king or chief for getting rid of an obnoxious person and acquiring his substance. The Inyanga, like our witch-finder of old, has no difficulty in bringing home guilt to the unfortunate accused. A Zulu judge, before pronouncing sentence, pretends that he consults the divine oracles of his nation. When a Zulu sneezes he says, "I am blessed, and the ancestral spirit is with me." So he praises the family manes, and ends by asking blessings, such as cattle and wives.

[Pg 636]In September 1879 official news came from Sir Garnet Wolseley that King Cetewayo had been captured, that the Zulu war had come to an end, and that the following were among the terms of peace, signed by the chiefs of Zululand: "I will not tolerate the employment of witch doctors, or the practice known as smelling out, or any practices of witchcraft."

Not unfrequently the representatives of Great Britain, in concluding peace with heathen nations, have, as in the case of the Zulus, to respect the superstitious notions of the people they have to deal with, so as to make the agreement more binding in the minds of the heathen contracting parties.

On one occasion the Ashantees put up a fetish to stop the advance of the British army. It consisted of a kid transfixed through the throat and heart, and staked to the ground; six cooking-pots, inverted, were stuck on stakes round the kid, and, a few feet from it, another kid was found buried: this, according to Ashantee custom, had been buried alive. A similar fetish had been put up at a river near Moinsey to stop the British troops. The advancing army found almost every turn of the road to Coomassie strewn with fetish documents. Near Fommanah nearly every tree had a white rag fastened to it as a charm. On the King hearing of the British victory, he went to pour libation to the spirits of his ancestors, and to ask their assistance against the enemies of his country.

The Shah of Persia has numerous talismans, exceeding two hundred in number. We give details of four of them. One is a gold star, supposed to have been possessed by the legendary Rustem. It is called Merzoum, and has the reputation of making conspirators immediately confess. When the Shah's brother was accused of treason some time since, the star was shown him, and, terrified and overcome by remorse, he avowed his iniquities. His confession was, of course, attributed to its[Pg 637] efficacy. He was banished. The next important talisman is a cube of amber, which, we are told, fell from heaven in Mohammed's time. It is supposed to render the Shah invulnerable, and he wears it about his neck. Another is a little box of gold, set in emeralds, and blessed by the Prophet. It renders the Royal Family invisible as long as they are celibates. Another is a diamond set in one of the Shah's scimitars, which renders its possessor invincible; and there is also a dagger with the same property, but it is ordained that those who use it shall perish by it. It is therefore carefully kept shut up in a sandal-wood box, on which is engraved a verse of the Koran.

As of old, superstition prevails all over India. Semi-religious ceremonies are gone through in seasons of drought, to procure rain. At other times means are taken to propitiate the gods, to subdue enemies, and to secure good fortune to individuals, households, and communities. There are Indian princes who regularly consult their fortune-tellers regarding public and private affairs.

A curious bathing fair was held at Ajudhia, in Oude, in February 1878. When a peculiar conjunction of the planets takes place (which occurs only once in eighty years), the natives rush in crowds to the river, as they believe that if they manage to bathe and go through certain ceremonies in four minutes and a half, they will obtain the remission of their own sins and those of millions of their ancestors. On this occasion the rush to the river turned out so great that numbers were trodden under foot, and sixty-five persons lost their lives.

The mysterious lights in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, which are believed by mariners to be warnings of great tempests and shipwreck, were unusually brilliant in 1878. It is said to be a fact, established by the experience of a century, that when these lights blaze brightly in the summer nights, the phenomena are invariably followed[Pg 638] by great storms. They give the appearance to spectators on the shore of a ship on fire. The fire itself seems to consist of blue and yellow flames, now dancing high above the water, and then flickering, paling, and dying out, only to spring up again with fresh brilliancy. If a boat approaches, it flits away, moving further out, and is pursued in vain. The lights are plainly visible from the shore from midnight until two in the morning. They appear to come from the sea shoreward, and at dawn retire gradually, and are lost in the morning mist. Paradis, the French pilot, who took charge of the British Fleet under Admiral Sir Hovenden Walker when it sailed up the St. Lawrence to seize Quebec in 1711, declared he saw one of these lights before that armada was shattered by a dreadful gale on the 22d of August. The light, he said, danced before his vessel all the way up the gulf. Every great wreck that has taken place there since Sir Hovenden Walker's calamity has been preceded, if tradition is to be believed, by these mysterious lights, and they have thus warned the mariner of fatal storms.

In July last (1879) a woman, known as the Queen of Hearts, who had attained the age of one hundred years, and who had been known for three quarters of a century as a fortune-teller, died in Vienna. Apparently gifted with the faculty of prescience, intimately acquainted with the shuffling of cards, deeply learned in the lore of the prophetic lines traced by the graver of Fate upon human hands and feet, this lady devoted her days to the unravelling of the tangled secrets of the future, charging those whose curiosity prompted them to pry into the regions of the unknown, five ducats per revelation. As many of the leading ladies of the Austrian aristocracy were among her clients, and the accuracy of her forecasts having earned for her a mighty reputation throughout the realms of the Hapsburgs, she contrived to amass a handsome fortune. "Herz-Dame" was a person of[Pg 639] extraordinary acumen, and a physiognomist of the highest order. Her sources of private information were numerous, and her ramifications are believed to have permeated every class of Austrian society.

A comparatively recent instance of superstition in America is that of an old Indian woman being suspected of witchcraft, and stoned to death in Pine Nut Valley, Nevada; and in another part of the world, far separated from America, a similar act of superstition was committed, in which a human creature fell a victim to the gross delusions of her neighbours. We refer to a case of witch-burning in Russia. In October 1879 seventeen peasants were tried for burning to death a supposed witch, who resided near Nijni-Novgorod. Of the accused persons, fourteen were acquitted, and three sentenced to church penances—sentences which, if rigorously carried out, will not be easily borne.

A Leipsic writer gives an account of a number of superstitious artists, some of which are very curious. Tietjens, for instance, believed that the person would speedily die who shook hands with her over the threshold at parting; Rachel thought she gained her greatest successes immediately after she had met a funeral; Bellini would not permit a new work to be brought out if on the day announced he was first greeted by a man, and "La Somnambula" was several times thus postponed; Meyerbeer regularly washed his hands before beginning an overture; and a noted tragedienne never plays unless she has a white mouse in her bosom.

But these eccentricities can hardly compare with the strange belief and doings of Hogarth, the celebrated painter and engraver, particularly towards the close of his long life. A few months before he was seized with the malady which cut him off, he commenced his "End of all Things." A few of his intimate friends looked upon his picture as prophetic; and so he seemed to regard it[Pg 640] himself. The artist worked with diligence, seemingly with an apprehension that he would not live to complete the piece. Finish it, however, he did in a masterly style, grouping everything that could denote the end of all things. Prominent were a broken bottle, an old broom, a bow unstrung, the butt-end of an old musket, a crown tumbled in pieces, towers in ruins, the moon in her wane, the map of the globe burning, Phœbus and his horses dead in the clouds, a vessel wrecked, Time with his hourglass and scythe broken, a tobacco-pipe in his mouth, the last puff of smoke going out; a play-book, with Exeunt Omnes on one of the open pages; an empty purse, and a statute of bankruptcy taken out against nature.

"So far so good," said Hogarth. "Nothing remains but this,"—taking his pencil and dashing off the similitude of a painter's palette broken. "Finis!" exclaimed the artist; "the deed is done—all is over." Hogarth never handled pencil again, and within a month of the completion of this picture he was no more.

Index