XV. THE GNOSTICS
Difficulty in defining Gnosticism—Magic and astrology in Gnosticism—Simon Magus as a Gnostic—Simon’s Helen—The number thirty and the moon—Ophites and Sethians—A magical diagram—Employment of names and formulae—Seven metals and planets—Magic of Simon’s followers—Magic of Marcus in the Eucharist—Other magic and occult lore of Marcus—Name and number magic—The magic vowels—Magic of Carpocrates—The Abraxas and the number 365—Astrology of Basilides—The Book of Helxai—Epiphanius on the Elchasaites—The Book of the Laws of Countries—Personality of Bardesanes—Sin possible for men, angels, and stars—Does fate in the astrological sense prevail?—National laws and customs as a proof of free will—Pistis-Sophia; attitude to astrology—“Magic” condemned—Power of names and rites—Interest in natural science—“Gnostic gems” and astrology—The planets in early Christian art—Gnostic amulets in Spain—Syriac Christian charms—Priscillian executed for magic—Manichean manuscripts—The Mandaeans.
[Sidenote: Difficulty in defining Gnosticism.]
Gnosticism[1600] is not easy to define and the term Gnostic appears to have been applied to a great variety of sects with a confusing diversity of beliefs. Many of the constituents and roots at least of Gnosticism were older than Christianity, and it is now the custom to associate the Gnosis or superior knowledge and revelation, which gives the movement its name, not with Greek philosophy or mysteries but with oriental speculation and religions. Anz[1601] has been impressed by its connection with Babylonian star-worship; Amélineau[1602] has urged its debt to Egyptian magic and religion; Bousset[1603] has argued for Persian origins. The main features of the great oriental religions which swept westward over the Roman Empire were shared by Gnosticism: the redeemer god, even the great mother goddess conception to some extent, the divinely revealed mysteries, the secret symbols, the dualism, and the cosmic theory. Gnosticism as it is known to us, however, is more closely connected with Christianity than with any other oriental religion or body of thought, for the extant sources consist almost entirely either of Gnostic treatises which pretend to be Christian Scriptures and were almost entirely written in Coptic in the second or third century of our era,[1604] or of hostile descriptions of Gnostic heresies by the early church fathers. However, the philosopher Plotinus also criticized the Gnostics, as we have seen.
[Sidenote: Magic and astrology in Gnosticism.]
What especially concerns our investigation is the great use made, or said to be made, by the Gnostics of sacred formulae, symbols, and names of demons, and the prevalence among them of astrological theory as shown by their widespread notion of the seven planets as the powers who have created our inferior and material world and who rule over its affairs. Gnosticism was deeply influenced by, albeit it to some extent represents a reaction against, the Babylonian star-worship and incantation of spirits. The seven planets and the demons occupy an important place in Gnostic myth because they intervene between our world and the world of supreme light, and their spheres must be traversed—much as in the Book of Enoch and Dante’s Paradiso—both by the redeeming god in his descent and return and by any human soul that would escape from this world of fate, darkness, and matter. What encouragement there is for such views in the canonical Scriptures themselves may be inferred from the following passage in which Christ foretells His second coming: “Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken. And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven; and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And He shall send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.”[1605] But in order to pass the demons and the spheres of the planets, who are usually represented as opposed to this, one must, as in the Egyptian Book of the Dead, know the passwords, the names of the spirits, the sacred formulae, the appropriate symbols, and all the other apparatus suggestive of magic and necromancy which forms so large a part of the gnosis that gives its name to the system. This will become the more apparent from the following particular accounts of Gnostic sects and doctrines found in the works of the Christian fathers and in the scanty remains of the Gnostics themselves. The philosopher Plotinus we have already heard charge the Gnostics with resort to magic and sorcery, and with ascribing evil and fatal influence to the stars. At the same time we shrewdly suspect that Gnosticism has been made a scapegoat for the sins in these regards of both early Christianity and pagan philosophy.
[Sidenote: Simon Magus as a Gnostic.]
Simon Magus, of whose magical exploits as recorded by many a Christian writer we shall treat in another chapter, is also represented by the fathers as holding Gnostic doctrine, although some writers have contended that Simon the magician named in Acts was an entirely different person from Simon the heretic and author of The Great Declaration.[1606] Simon declared himself the Great Power of God, or the Being who was over all, who had appeared in Samaria as the Father, in Judea as the Son, and to other nations as the Holy Spirit.[1607] In the Pseudo-Clementines Simon is represented as arguing against Peter in characteristically Gnostic style that “he who framed the world is not the highest God, but that the highest God is another who alone is good and who has remained unknown up to this time.”[1608] According to Epiphanius Simon claimed to have descended from heaven through the planetary spheres and spirits in the manner of the Gnostic redeemer. He is quoted as saying, “But in each heaven I changed my form in accordance with the form of those who were in each heaven, that I might escape the notice of my angelic powers and come down to the Thought, who is none other than she who is likewise called Prounikon and the Holy Spirit.” Epiphanius further informs us that Simon believed in a plurality of heavens, assigned certain powers to each firmament and heaven, and applied barbaric names to these spirits or cosmic forces. “Nor,” adds Epiphanius, “can anyone be saved unless he learns this mystic lore and offers such sacrifices to the Father of all through these archons and authorities.”[1609]
[Sidenote: Simon’s Helen.]
The fathers tell us that Simon went about with a woman called Helena or Helen, who Justin Martyr says had formerly been a prostitute.[1610] Simon is said to have called her the mother of all, through whom God had created the angels and aeons, who in their turn had formed the world and men. These cosmic powers had then, however, cast her down to earth, where she had been confined in various successive human and animal bodies. She seems to have obtained her name of Helen from the fact that it was for her that the Trojan war had been fought, an event which Simon seems to have subjected to much allegorical interpretation. He also spoke of Helen as “the lost sheep,” whom he, the Great Power, had descended from heaven to release from the bonds of the flesh. She was that Thought or Holy Spirit which we have heard him say he came down to recover. Simon’s Helen also corresponds to Pistis-Sophia, who in the extant Gnostic work named after her descends through the twelve aeons, deceived by a lion-faced power whom they have formed to mislead her, and then reascends by the aid of Jesus or the true light. It seems fairly evident that the fathers[1611] have taken literally and travestied by a scandalous application to an actual woman a beautiful Gnostic myth or allegory concerning the human soul. At the same time Simon’s Helen reminds us of Jesus’s relations with the woman taken in adultery, the woman of Samaria, and Mary Magdalene. Mary Magdalene, it may be noted, in the Gnostic writing, Pistis-Sophia, takes a rôle superior to the twelve disciples, a fact of which Peter complains to his Lord more than once. But Simon’s Helen was that spirit of truth which lies latent in the human mind and which he endeavored to release by means of the philosophy, astrology, and magic of his time. May modern scientific method prove more successful in setting the prisoner free!
[Sidenote: The number thirty and the moon.]
We find in the Pseudo-Clementines other details concerning Simon and Helen which bring out the astrological side of Gnosticism. We are told that John the Baptist had thirty disciples, a number suggestive of the days of the moon and also of the thirty aeons of the Gnostics of whom we elsewhere hear a great deal.[1612] But the revolution of the moon does not occupy thirty full days, so that we are not surprised to learn that one of these disciples was a woman and furthermore that she was the very Helen of whom we have been speaking. At least, she is so called in the Homilies of the Pseudo-Clement; in the Recognitions she is actually called Luna or the Moon.[1613] After the death of John the Baptist Simon by his magic power supplanted Dositheus as leader of the thirty, and then fell in love with Luna and went about with her, proclaiming that she was Wisdom or Truth, “brought down ... from the highest heavens to this world.”[1614] The number thirty is again associated with Simon and Dositheus in a curiously insistent, although apparently unconscious, manner by Origen, who in one passage of his Reply to Celsus, written in the first half of the third century, expresses doubt whether thirty followers of Simon, the Samaritan magician, can be found in all the world, and in a second passage, while asserting that “Simonians are found nowhere throughout the world,” adds that of the followers of Dositheus there are now not more than thirty in all.[1615]
[Sidenote: Ophites and Sethians.]
Similar to Simon’s account of the heavens and of his descent through them were the teachings of the Ophites and Sethians who, according to Irenaeus,[1616] held that Christ “descended through the seven heavens, having assumed the likeness of their sons, and gradually emptied them of their power.” These heretics also represented the “heavens, potentates, powers, angels, and creators as sitting in their proper order in heaven, according to their generation, and as invisibly ruling over things celestial and terrestrial.” All ruling spirits were not invisible, however, since the Ophites and Sethians identified with the seven planets their Holy Hebdomad, consisting of Ialdabaoth, Iao, Sabaoth, Adonaus (or, Adonai), Eloeus, Oreus, and Astanphaeus,—names often employed in the Greek magical papyri,[1617] in medieval incantations, and in the Jewish Cabbala. The Ophites and Sethians further asserted that when the serpent was cast down into the lower world by the Father, he begat six sons who, with himself, constitute a group of seven corresponding and in contrast to the Holy Hebdomad which surround the Father. They are the seven mundane demons who are ever hostile to humanity. The Sethians of course took their name from Seth, son of Adam, who in the middle ages was regarded sometimes, like Enoch, as the especial recipient of divine revelation and as the author of sacred books. The historian Josephus states in his Jewish Antiquities that Seth and his descendants discovered the art of astronomy and that one of the two pillars on which they recorded their findings was still extant in his time, the first century.[1618] Under the caption, Sethian Tablets of Curses, Wünsch has published some magical imprecations scratched on lead tablets between 390 and 420 A. D. at Rome.[1619] Eight revelations ascribed to Adam and Seth are also extant in Armenian.[1620]
[Sidenote: A magical diagram.]
In Origen’s Reply to Celsus is described a mystic diagram with details redolent of magic and astrological necromancy,[1621] which Celsus had laid to the charge of Christians generally but which Origen declares is probably the product of the “very insignificant sect called Ophites.” Origen himself has seen this diagram or one something like it, and assures his readers that “we know the depth of these unhallowed mysteries,” but he declares that he has never met anybody anywhere who put any faith in this diagram. Obviously, however, such a diagram would not have been in existence if no one had ever had faith in it. Furthermore, its survival into Origen’s time, when he asserts that men had ceased to use it, is evidence of the antiquity of the sect and the superstition. In this diagram ten distinct circles were united by a single circle representing the soul of all things and called Leviathan. Celsus spoke of the upper circles, of which at least some were in colors, as “those that are above the heavens.” On these were inscribed such words and phrases as “Father and Son,” “Love,” “Life,” “Knowledge,” and “Understanding.” Then there were “the seven circles of archontic demons,” who are probably to be connected with the spheres of the seven planets. These seven ruling demons were represented by animal heads or figures, somewhat resembling the symbols of the four evangelists to be seen in the mosaics at Ravenna and elsewhere in Christian art. The angel Michael was depicted by a sort of chimaera, the words of Celsus being, “The goat was shaped like a lion”; Suriel, by a bull; Raphael, by a dragon; Gabriel, by an eagle; Thautabaoth, by a bear; Erataoth, by a dog; and Thaphabaoth or Onoel, by an ass. The diagram was divided by a thick black line called Gehenna and beneath the lowest circle was placed “the being named Behemoth.” There was also “a square pattern” with inscriptions concerning the gates of paradise, a flaming circle with a flaming sword as its diameter guarding the tree of knowledge and of life, “a barrier inscribed in the shape of a hatchet,” and a rhomboid with the words, “The foresight of wisdom.” Celsus further mentioned a seal with which the Father impresses the Son, who says, “I have been anointed with white ointment from the tree of life,” and seven angels who contend with the seven ruling demons for the soul of the dying body.
[Sidenote: Employment of names and formulae.]
Origen further informs us of the forms of salutation to each ruling spirit employed by “those sorcerers,” as they pass through “the fence of wickedness” or the gate to the realm of each spirit. The names of the spirits are now given as Ialdabaoth, who is the lion-like archon and with whom the planet Saturn is in sympathy, Iao or Jah, Sabaoth, Adonaeus, Astaphaeus, Aloaeus or Eloaeus, and Horaeus. The following is an example of the salutations or invocations addressed to these spirits: “Thou, O second Iao, who shinest by night, who art the ruler of the secret mysteries of Son and Father, first prince of death, and portion of the innocent, bearing now thine own beard as symbol, I am ready to pass through thy realm, having strengthened him who is born of thee by the living word. Grace be with me; Father, let it be with me!” Origen also states that the makers of this diagram have borrowed from magic the names Ialdabaoth, Astaphaeus, and Horaeus, while the other four are names of God drawn from the Hebrew Scriptures.
[Sidenote: Seven metals and planets.]
It is worth noting that immediately before this account of the diagram Celsus had described similar Persian mysteries of Mithras, in which seven heavens through which the soul has to pass were arranged in an ascending scale like a ladder.[1622] Each successive heaven was entered by a gate of a metal corresponding to the planet in question, lead for Saturn, tin for Venus, copper for Jupiter, iron for Mercury, a mixed metal for Mars, silver for the moon, and gold for the sun. This association of metals and planets became a common feature of medieval alchemy. At the same time the passage is said to be our chief literary source for the mysteries of Mithras.[1623]
[Sidenote: Magic of Simon’s followers.]
The Simonians, according to Irenaeus, were as addicted to magic as their founder had been, employing exorcisms and incantations, love-philters and enchantments, familiar spirits and “dream-senders.” “And whatever other curious arts may be resorted to are eagerly employed by them.” Menander, the immediate successor of Simon in Samaria, was “a perfect adept in the practice of magic” and taught that by means of it one could overcome the angels who had created this world.[1624] In a treatise on rebaptism, falsely ascribed to Cyprian but very likely contemporary with him, it is stated that the Simonians regard their baptism as superior to that of orthodox Christians, because when they descend into the water fire appears upon its surface. The writer thinks that this is done by some trick, or that there is some natural explanation of it, or that they merely imagine that they see a flame on the water, or that it is the work of some evil one and of magic power.[1625] Epiphanius states that Simon employed such obscene substances as semen and menstruum in his magic,[1626] but this seems to be a slander, at least against Gnosticism, since in a passage of the Gnostic Book of the Saviour, adjoined to the Pistis-Sophia, Thomas asks Jesus what shall be the punishment of men who eat “semen maris et menstruum feminae” mixed with lentils, saying as they do so, “We believe in Esau and Jacob,” and is told that this is the worst of sins and that the souls of those committing it will be absolutely blotted out.[1627]
[Sidenote: Magic of Marcus in the Eucharist.]
Next to Simon Magus, Marcus was the Gnostic and heretic most notorious as a practitioner of the magic arts, as Irenaeus states at the close of the second century, and Hippolytus and Epiphanius repeat in the third and fourth centuries respectively.[1628] In performing the Eucharist he would change white wine placed in three wine cups into three different colors, one blood-red, one purple, and one dark blue, according to Epiphanius, while Irenaeus and Hippolytus more vaguely state, although they lived closer to Marcus’s time, that he gave the wine a purple or reddish hue as if it had been changed into blood, an alteration which Marcus himself regarded as a manifestation of divine grace. Epiphanius attributes the change to an incantation muttered by Marcus while pretending to perform the Eucharist. Hippolytus, who ascribes Marcus’s feats partly to sleight-of-hand and partly to demons, in this case charges that he furtively dropped some drug into the wine. Marcus was also accustomed to fill a large cup from a smaller one so that it would overflow, a marvel which Hippolytus again tries to account for by stating that “very many drugs, when mingled in this way with liquid substances” temporarily increase their volume, “especially when diluted in wine.”
[Sidenote: Other magic and occult lore of Marcus.]
Irenaeus, who is quoted verbatim by Epiphanius, further states that Marcus had a familiar demon by whose aid he was able to prophesy, and that he pretended to confer this gift upon others. He also accuses Marcus of seducing women by means of philters and love potions which he compounded. Hippolytus does not make these charges, but unites with the others in describing at length Marcus’s theory of mystic names and his symbolical and mystical interpretation of the letters of the alphabet and of numbers. Marcus made various calculations based upon the number of letters in a name, the number of letters in the name of each letter, and so on. When Christ, whose ineffable name has thirty letters, said, “I am Alpha and Omega,” He was believed by Marcus to have displayed the dove, whose number is 801. These reveries “are mere bits,” as Hippolytus says, of astrological theory and Pythagorean philosophy. We shall find them perpetuated in the middle ages in the method of divination known as the Sphere of Pythagoras.
[Sidenote: Name and number magic.]
Such symbolism and mysticism concerning numbers and letters seldom indeed remain a matter of mere theory but readily lend themselves to operative magic. Thus Hippolytus can speak in the same breath of “magical arts and Pythagorean numbers” or tell that Pythagoras himself “also touched on magic, as they say, and himself discovered an art of physiognomy, laying down as a basis certain numbers and measures.” Or note a third passage where Hippolytus is discussing Egyptian theology based on the theory of numbers.[1629] After treating of the monad, duad, and enneads, of the four elements in pairs, of the 360 parts of the circle, of “ascending and beneficent and masculine names” which end in odd numbers, and of feminine and malicious and descending names which terminate in even numbers, Hippolytus continues, “Moreover, they assert that they have calculated the word, ‘Deity.’ Now this name is an even number, and they write it down and attach it to the body and accomplish cures by it. In the same way an herb which terminates in this number is bound around the body and operates by reason of a similar calculation of the number. Nay, even a doctor cures the sick by such calculations.“ Similarly Censorinus states that the number seven is ascribed to Apollo and used in the cure of bodily ills, while nine is associated with the Muses and heals mental diseases.[1630] But to return to Gnosticism.
[Sidenote: The magic vowels.]
The seven vowels were much employed by the Gnostics, undoubtedly as symbols for the seven planets and the spirits associated with them, but as symbols possessed of magic power as well as of mystic significance. “The Saviour and His disciples are supposed in the midst of their sentences to have broken out in an interminable gibberish of only vowels; magic spells have come down to us consisting of vowels by the fourscore; on amulets the seven vowels, repeated according to all sorts of artifices, form a very common inscription.”[1631] As the seven planets made the music of the spheres, so the seven vowels seem to have represented the musical scale, “and many a Gnostic sheet of vowels is in fact a sheet of music.”[1632]
[Sidenote: Magic of Carpocrates.]
Other heretics with Gnostic views who were accused of magic by the fathers were the followers of Carpocrates, who employed incantations and spells, philters and potions, who attracted spirits to themselves and made light of the cosmic angels, and who pretended to have great power over all things so that they were able by their magic to satisfy every desire.[1633]
[Sidenote: The Abraxas and the number 365.]
Saturninus and Basilides were charged with “practicing magic, and employing images, incantations, invocations, and every other kind of curious art.” They also believed in a supreme power named Abrasax or Abraxas, whose number was 365; and they contended that there were 365 heavens and as many bones in the human body; “and they strive to set forth the names, principles, angels, and powers of the 365 imagined heavens.”[1634]
[Sidenote: Astrology of Basilides.]
Hippolytus gives further indication of the astrological leanings of Basilides, who held that each thing had its own particular time, and supported his view by citing the Magi gazing wistfully at the star of Bethlehem and the remark of Christ Himself, “Mine hour is not yet come.”[1635] I suppose that by this Hippolytus means to suggest that Basilides held the astrological doctrine of elections; Basilides further affirmed, according to Hippolytus, that Jesus was “mentally preconceived at the time of the generation of the stars; and of the complete return to their starting point of all the seasons in the vast conglomeration,” that is, at the end of the astronomical magnus annus, variously reckoned as of 36,000 or 15,000 years in duration.
[Sidenote: The Book of Helxai.]
In his Refutation of all Heresies[1636] Hippolytus tells of an Alcibiades from Apamea in Syria who in his time brought to Rome a book supposed to contain revelations made to a holy man, Elchasai or Helxai, by an angel ninety-six miles in height and from sixteen to twenty-four miles in breadth and leaving a footprint fourteen miles long. This angel was the Son of God, and was accompanied by a female of corresponding size who was the Holy Spirit. This apparition and revelation was accompanied by a preaching of a new remission of sins in the third year of Trajan’s reign, at which time we are led to suppose that the Book of Helxai came into existence. It imposed secrecy upon those initiated into its mysteries. The sect, according to Hippolytus, were much given to magic, astrology, and the number mysticism of Pythagoras. The Elchasaites employed incantations and formulae to cure persons bitten by mad dogs or afflicted with disease. In such cases and also in the case of rebaptism for the remission of sins it was customary with them to invoke or adjure “seven witnesses,” not however in this case the planets, but “the heaven, and the water, and the holy spirits, and the angels of prayer, and the oil (or, the olive), and the salt, and the earth.” Hippolytus declares that their formulae of this sort were “very numerous and very ridiculous.” They dipped consumptives and persons possessed by demons in cold water forty times in seven days. They believed in the astrological doctrine of elections, since their sacred book warned them not to baptize or begin other important undertakings upon those days which were governed by the evil stars. They also seem to have predicted political events from the stars, foretelling that three years after Trajan’s subjugation of the Parthians “war rages between the impious angels of the northern (constellations), and on this account all kingdoms of impiety are in confusion.”
[Sidenote: Epiphanius on the Elchasaites.]
In the next century Epiphanius adds one or two further details to Hippolytus’ account of the Elchasaites. Besides the list of seven witnesses already given he mentions another slightly different one: salt, water, earth, wheat, heaven, ether, and wind. He also tells of two sisters in the time of Constantine who were supposed to be descendants of Helxai. One of them was still alive the last Epiphanius knew, and crowds followed “this witch” to collect the dust of her footprints or her spittle to use in curing diseases.[1637]
[Sidenote: The Book of the Laws of Countries.]
We possess an important document for the attitude of early Christianity and Gnosticism towards astrology in The Dialogue concerning Fate or The Book of the Laws of Countries of Bardesanes or Bardaisan.[1638] The complete Syriac text is extant;[1639] there is a long and somewhat modified extract adopted from it in the Latin Recognitions of Clement,[1640] and briefer fragments in the Greek fathers. Strictly speaking, the text seems to be written by some follower of Bardesanes named Philip who represents his master as discussing the problem of human free will with Avida, himself, and other disciples. The bulk of the treatise is in any case put in Bardesanes’ mouth and it probably reflects his views with fair accuracy. Eusebius ascribed it to Bardesanes himself.
[Sidenote: Personality of Bardesanes]
Bardesanes (154-222 A. D.) was born in Edessa. He spent most of his life in Mesopotamia but for a time went to Armenia as a missionary. His many works in Syriac included apologies for Christianity, attacks upon heresies, and numerous hymns, but the only work extant is the treatise we are about to examine, with the possible exception of The Hymn of the Soul[1641] ascribed to him and contained in the Syriac Acts of St. Thomas. His doctrines were regarded by Ephraem Syrus and others as tainted with Gnostic heresy. He is often represented as a follower of Valentinus, but the ancient authorities, such as Epiphanius and Eusebius, disagree as to whether he degenerated from orthodoxy to Valentinianism or reformed in the opposite direction. In the dialogue which we consider he is represented as a Christian, but his remarks have often been thought to have a Gnostic flavor. F. Nau, however, has argued that he was not a Gnostic and that the statements in question in the dialogue can be explained as purely astrological.[1642]
[Sidenote: Sin possible for men, angels, and stars.]
The treatise opens with the query, why did not God make men so that they could not sin? The reply of course is that moral freedom for good or evil is a greater gift of God than compulsory morality. By virtue of his individual freedom of action man is equal to the angels, some of whom, too, have sinned with the daughters of men and fallen, and is superior even to the sun, moon, and signs of the zodiac which are fixed in their courses. The stars, however, as in The Book of Enoch, “are not absolutely destitute of all freedom” and will be held responsible at the day of judgment. Presently some of them are called evil.
[Sidenote: Does fate in the astrological sense prevail?]
After some discussion whether man does wrong from his nature, the treatise turns to the question, how far are men controlled by fate, that is, by the power of the seven planets in accordance with the doctrine of the Chaldeans, which is the term here usually employed for astrologers. Some men attack astrology as “a lying invention” and hold that the human will is free and that such evils as man cannot avoid are due to chance or to divine punishment but not to the stars. Between these extremes Bardesanes takes middle ground. He believes that there is such a force in the stars, whom he refers to as Potentates and Governors, as the fate of which the astrologers speak, but that this fate evidently does not rule everything, since it is itself established by the one God who imposed upon the stars and elements that motion in conformity with which “intelligences undergo change when they descend to the soul, and souls undergo change when they descend to bodies,” a statement which appears to have a Gnostic flavor. This fate furthermore is limited by nature on the one hand and human free will on the other hand. The vital processes and periods which are common to all men, such as birth, generation, child-bearing, eating, drinking, old age, and death, Bardesanes regards as governed by nature. “The body,” he says, “is neither hindered nor helped by fate in the several acts it performs,” a view which most astrologers would probably not accept. On the contrary, in Bardesanes’ opinion wealth and honors, power and subjection, sickness and health, are controlled by fate which often disturbs the regular course of nature. This is because in genesis or the nativity the stars, some of which work with and some against nature, are in conflict. In short, some stars are good and some are evil.
[Sidenote: National laws and customs as a proof of free will.]
If nature is thus often upset by the stars, fate in its turn may be resisted and overpowered by man’s exercise of will. This assertion Bardesanes proceeds to prove by the argument which has given to the dialogue the title, The Book of the Laws of the Countries, and which we find much repeated in subsequent writers. Briefly it is that in various nations certain laws are enforced upon, or customs observed by all the people alike regardless of their diverse individual horoscopes. In illustration of this are listed various prohibitions and practices fondly supposed by Bardesanes and his audience to characterize the Seres, Brahmans, Persians, Geli, Bactrians, Arabs, Britons, Parthians, Amazons, and other peoples. Savage tribes are mentioned among whom there are no artists, bankers, perfumers, musicians, and poets to fit the nativities decreed by the constellations for certain times. Bardesanes is aware of the astrological theory of seven zones or climes, by which the science of individual horoscopes is corrected and modified, but he contends that there are many different laws in each of these zones, and would be, even if the number were raised to twelve according to the number of the signs or to thirty-six after the decans. He also contends that men retain their laws or customs when they migrate to other climes, and adduces the fidelity of Jews and Christians to the commandments of their respective religions as a further illustration of the triumph of free will over the stars. He concedes, however, as before that “in every country and in every nation there are rich and poor, and rulers and subjects, and people in health and those who are sick, each one according as fate and his nativity have affected him.” Incidentally to the foregoing discussion it is affirmed that the astrology of Egypt and that of the Chaldeans in Babylon are identical. At the close of the treatise is appended a note stating that Bardesanes estimated the duration of the world at six thousand years on the basis of sixty as the least number of years in which the seven planets complete an even number of revolutions.
[Sidenote: The Pistis-Sophia: attitude to astrology.]
If the work ascribed to Bardesanes is not certainly Gnostic, the Pistis-Sophia is, and we turn next to it and first of all to its attitude towards astrology. This treatise is extant in a Coptic codex of the fifth or sixth century;[1643] the Greek original text was probably written in the second half of the third century. It gives the revelations made by Jesus to his disciples after He had ascended to heaven and returned again to them. When He ascended through the heavens, He changed the fatal influence of the lords of the spheres and made the planets turn to the right for six months of the year, whereas before they had faced the left continually.[1644] In a long passage near the close of the Pistis-Sophia proper[1645] Jesus asserts the absolute control of human destiny hitherto by “the rulers of the fate” and describes how they fashion the new soul, control the process of generation and of the formation of the child in the womb, and decree every event of life down to the day and manner of death. Only by the Gnostic key to the mysteries can one escape their control.[1646] In the following Book of the Saviour, moreover, even the finding of this key is subjected to astral control, since a constellation is described under which all souls descending to this world will be just and good and will discover the mysteries of light.[1647]
[Sidenote: “Magic” condemned.]
The Pistis-Sophia assumes the usual attitude of condemnation of magic so-called. Among the evils which Jesus warns his followers to renounce are superstition and invocations and drugs or magic potions.[1648] One object of his reducing by one-third the power of the lords of the spheres when He ascended through the heavens was that men might not henceforth invoke them by magic rites for evil purposes. Marvels may still, however, be accomplished by “those who know the mysteries of the magic of the thirteenth aeon” or power above the spheres.[1649]
[Sidenote: Power of names and rites.]
But while magic is renounced, great faith is shown in the power of names and rites. Thus after a description of the dragon of outer darkness and the twelve main dungeons into which it divides and the animal faces and names of the twelve rulers thereof, who evidently represent in an inaccurate fashion the signs of the zodiac, it is added that even unrepentant sinners, if they know the mystery of any one of these twelve names, can escape from these dungeons.[1650] In the Book of the Saviour Jesus not only utters several long lists of strange and presumably magic words by way of invocation to the Power or powers above, but these are accompanied by careful observance of ceremonial. On both occasions Jesus and the disciples are clad in linen.[1651] In the first case the disciples are carefully grouped with reference to the points of the compass, towards which Jesus turns successively as He utters the magic words standing at a sacrificial altar. The result of this ceremony and invocation was that the heavens were displaced and the earth left behind and that Jesus and the disciples found themselves in the region of mid-air. Before uttering the other invocation Jesus commanded that fire and vine branches be brought, placed an offering on the flame, and carefully arranged two vessels of wine, two cups of water, and as many pieces of bread as there were disciples. In this case the object was to remit the sins of the disciples. In the Book of Jeû in the Bruce Papyrus there is a perfect riot of such magic names and invocations, seals and diagrams, and accompanying ceremonial.[1652]
[Sidenote: Interest in natural science.]
The interest of the Gnostics in natural science is seen in the list of things that will be known by one who has penetrated all the mysteries and fully entered upon the inheritance of the kingdom of light. Not only will he understand why there is light and darkness, and why sin and vice exist and life and death, but also why there are reptiles and wild beasts and why they shall be destroyed, why there are birds and beasts of burden, why there are gems and precious metals, why there are brass, iron and steel, lead, glass, wax, herbs, waters, “and why the wild denizens of the sea.” Why there are four points of the compass, why demons and men, why heat and cold, stars, winds, and clouds, frost, snow, planets, aeons, decans, and so on and so forth.[1653]
[Sidenote: “Gnostic gems” and astrology.]
King has shown that many of the so-called “Gnostic gems” are purely astrological talismans and that “only a very small minority amidst their multitude present any traces of the influence of Christian doctrines.”[1654] Many are for medicinal or magical purposes rather than of a religious character. Some nevertheless are engraved with the truly Gnostic figure of Pantheus Abraxas which King regards as “the actual invention of Basilides.” Another common symbol, borrowed from Egypt, is the Agathodaemon, which by the third century had become the popular designation of the hooded snake of Egypt, or Chnuphis or Chneph, a great serpent with a lion’s head encircled by a crown of seven or twelve rays, representing the planets or signs. Often the seven Greek vowels are placed at the tips of the seven rays. On the obverse of the gem the letter “s” is engraved thrice and traversed by a straight rod, a design probably meant to depict a snake twisting about a wand. We are reminded, not only with King of the club of Aesculapius, but of Aaron’s rod, the magicians of Pharaoh, and the serpent lifted up in the wilderness; also of Lucian’s tale of the pretended discovery of the god Asclepius by the pseudo-prophet, Alexander. At least one “Gnostic amulet” has on the back the legend “Iao Sabao” (th).[1655]
[Sidenote: The planets in early Christian art.]
The influence of astrology may be seen in other and more certainly genuine works of early Christian art than many of the so-called Gnostic gems. On a lamp in the catacombs Christ is depicted as the good shepherd with a lamb on His shoulder. Above His head are the seven planets, although the sun and moon are shown again at either side, and about His feet press seven lambs, perhaps an indication that He is freeing the peoples of the seven climes from the fatal influence of the stars. In the Poemander attributed to Hermes it is stated that there are seven peoples from the seven planets. On a gem of perhaps the third century a similar scene is engraved except that the sun and moon are not shown apart from the seven planets, and that the lamb on Christ’s shoulders is counted as one of the seven, so that there are but six at His feet.[1656]
[Sidenote: Gnostic amulets in Spain.]
“Gnostic amulets and other works of art” are occasionally found in Spain, especially the Asturian northwest which remained Christian at the time of the Mohammedan conquest of the rest of the peninsula. One ring is inscribed with the sentence, “Zeus, Serapis, and Iao are one.” On another octagonal ring are Greek letters signifying the Gnostic Anthropos or father of wisdom. A stone is carved with a candelabrum and the seven planets, “the sacred hebdomad of the Chaldeans.”[1657]
[Sidenote: Syriac Christian charms.]
Gollancz in his Selection of Charms from Syriac Manuscripts presents a number of spells and incantations which, whether any of them are Gnostic or not, certainly seem to be Christian, since they mention the divine persons of Christianity, Mary, and various Biblical characters.[1658]
[Sidenote: Priscillian executed for magic.]
At the close of the fourth century the views of the Gnostics were revived in Gaul and Spain by Priscillian, who seems to have been much influenced by astrology and who was put to death at Treves in 385 A. D. on a charge of magic. He confessed under torture, but was afterwards thought innocent. We are not told, however, what the magical practices were of which he was accused.[1659] Both Sulpicius Severus and Isidore of Seville[1660] state that he was accused of maleficium, which should mean witchcraft, sorcery, or magical operations with the intent to injure someone. But further details are wanting, except that Sulpicius calls Priscillian a man “more puffed up than was right with the knowledge of profane things, and who was further believed to have practiced magic arts since adolescence,” while Isidore states that Bishop Itacius (Ithaicus), who was largely responsible for pushing the charges against Priscillian, showed in a book which he wrote against Priscillian’s heresy that “a certain Marcus of Memphis, most learned in magic art, was a disciple of Mani and master of Priscillian.” Priscillian himself states in his extant works that Itacius had accused him of magic in 380. As the final trial proceeded, Itacius gave way as accuser to a public prosecutor (fisci patronus) who continued the case on behalf of the emperor Maximus who seems to have had his eye upon Priscillian’s large fortune. St. Martin of Tours in vain obtained from Maximus a promise that Priscillian should not be put to death.[1661] But his execution brought his persecutor Itacius into such bad odor that he was excommunicated and condemned to exile for the rest of his life.
[Sidenote: Manichean Manuscripts]
We have just heard that Priscillian was taught by a disciple of Mani, while Ephraem Syrus states that Bardesanes was the teacher of Mani. Augustine in his youth, when a follower of the Manicheans, had been devoted to astrology. This connection between Gnosticism and astrology and Manicheism has been further attested by the fragments of Manichean manuscripts recently discovered in central Asia.[1662] In them the sun-god and moon-god and five other planets play a prominent part. Besides the five planets we have five elements—ether, wind, light, fire, and water—five plants, five trees, and five beings with souls—man, quadrupeds, reptiles, aquatic, and flying animals. The five gods or luminous bodies are represented as good forces who imprisoned five kinds of demons; but the devil had his revenge by imprisoning luminous forces in man, whom he made a microcosm of the universe. And whereas the good spirit had created sun and moon, the devil formed male and female. The great sage of beneficent light then appeared in the world and brought forth from his own five members five liberators—pity, contentment, patience, wisdom, and good faith—corresponding to the five elements just as among the Christians we shall find four virtues and four elements. Then ensued the struggle of the old man with the new man. Although we are commonly told that idolatry and magic were strictly prohibited by the Manicheans, the envoy of light is in one text represented as “employing great magic prayers” in his effort to deliver living beings. When men eat living beings, they offend against the five gods, the earth dry and moist, the five orders of animate beings, the five different herbs and five trees. Other numbers than five appear in these Manichean fragments: four seals of light and four praises, four courts with iron barriers; three vestments and three wheels and three calamities; ten vows and ten layers of heavens above, and eight layers of earth beneath; twelve great kings and twelve evil natures; thirteen great luminous forces and thirteen parts of the carnal body and thirteen vices,—elsewhere fourteen parts; fifteen enumerations of sins for which forgiveness is sought; fifty days in the year to be observed; and so on.
[Sidenote: The Mandaeans.]
A sect derived either from Gnosticism or from common sources seems still to exist in the case of the Mandaeans of southern Babylonia.[1663] They believe that the earth and man were formed by a Demiurge, who corresponds to the Ialdabaoth of the Ophites, and who was aided by the spirits of the seven planets. They divide the history of the world into seven ages and represent Jesus Christ as a false prophet and magician produced by the planet Mercury. The lower world consists of four vestibules and three hells proper and has seven iron and seven golden walls. A dying Mandaean is clothed in a holy dress of seven pieces. The spirits of the planets, however, are represented as evil beings, and the first two of three sets of progeny borne by the spirit of hell fire were the seven planets and the twelve signs of the zodiac. The influence of these two numbers, seven and twelve, may be further seen in the regulation that a candidate for the priesthood should be at least nineteen years old and have had twelve years of previous training, which we infer would normally begin when he reached his seventh year and not before. Other prominent numbers in Mandaean lore are five,[1664] perhaps indicative of the planets other than sun and moon, and three hundred and sixty, suggestive of the number of degrees in the circle of the zodiac. Thus the main manifestations of the primal light are five, and the third generation produced by the spirit of hell fire was of like number. The number of aeons is often stated as three hundred and sixty, and the delivering deity or Messiah of the Mandaeans is said to have sent forth that number of disciples before his return to the realm of light. We hear of yet other numbers, such as 480,000 years for the duration of the world, 60,000, and 240, but these too are commensurate, if not identical, with astrological periods such as those of conjunctions and the magnus annus. A peculiarity of Mandaean astronomy and astrology is that the other heavenly bodies are all believed to rotate about the polar star. Mandaeans always face it when praying; their sanctuaries are built so that persons entering face it; and even the dying man is placed so that his feet point and eyes gaze in its direction. Like the Gnostics, the Mandaeans invoke by many strange names their spirits and aeons who are divided into numerous orders. Their names for the planets seem to be of Babylonian origin. Passages from their sacred books are recited like incantations and are considered more effective in danger and distress than prayer in the ordinary sense of the word. Such recitations are also employed to aid the souls of the dead to ascend through various stages or prisons to the world of light. Earthenware vessels have recently been brought to light with Mandaean inscriptions and incantations to avert evil.[1665]
XVI. THE CHRISTIAN APOCRYPHA
Magic in the Bible—Apocryphal Gospels of the Infancy—Question of their date—Their medieval influence—Resemblances to Apuleius and Apollonius in the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy—Counteracting magic and demons—Other miracles and magic by the Christ child—Sometimes with injurious results—Further marvels from the Pseudo-Matthew—Learning of the Christ child—Other charges of magic against Christ and the apostles—The Magi and the star—Allegorical zoology of Barnabas—Traces of Gnosticism in the apocryphal Acts—Legend of St. John—Legend of St. Sousnyos—Old Testament Apocrypha of the Christian era.
[Sidenote: Magic in the Bible.]
It is hardly necessary to rehearse here in detail the numerous allusions to, prohibitions of, and descriptions of the practice of magic, witchcraft, and astrology, enchantments and exorcisms, divination and interpretation of dreams, which are to be found scattered through the pages of the Old and New Testaments. Such passages had a profound influence upon Christian thought on such themes in the early church and during the middle ages, and we shall have occasion to mention many, if not most, of such scriptural passages, in connection with this later discussion of them by the church fathers and others. For instance, Pharaoh’s magicians and their contests with Moses and Aaron; Balaam and his imprecations and enchantments and prediction that a star would come out of Jacob and a scepter out of Israel; the witch of Endor or ventriloquist and her invocation of what seemed to be the ghost of Samuel; the repeated use of the numbers seven and twelve, suggestive of the planets and signs of the zodiac, as in the twelve cakes of showbread and candlestick with seven branches; the dreams and interpretation of dreams of Joseph and Daniel, not to mention the former’s silver divining cup;[1666] the wise men who saw Christ’s star in the east; Christ’s own allusion to the shaking of “the powers of the heavens” and the gathering of His elect from the four winds at His second coming; the accusation against Christ that He cast out demons by the aid of the prince of demons; the eclipse of the sun at the time of the crucifixion; the adventures of the apostles with Simon Magus, with Elymas the sorcerer, and with the damsel possessed with a spirit of divination who brought her master much gain by soothsaying; the burning of their books of magic by the vagabond Jewish exorcists; the prohibitions of heathen divination and witchcraft by the Mosaic law and by the prophets; the penalties prescribed for sorcerers in the Book of Revelation; at the same time the legalized practice of similar superstitions, such as the ordeal to test a wife’s faithfulness by making her drink “the bitter water that causeth the curse,”[1667] the engraved gold plate upon the high priest’s forehead,[1668] or the use of Paul’s handkerchief and underwear to cure the sick and dispel demons; the promise to believers in the closing verses or appendix of The Gospel according to St. Mark that they shall cast out devils, speak with new tongues, handle serpents and drink poison without injury, and cure the sick by laying on of hands. The foregoing scarcely exhaust the obvious allusions or analogies to astrology and other magic arts in the Bible, to say nothing of less explicit passages[1669] which were later taken to justify certain occult arts, as Exodus XIII, 9, to support chiromancy, and the Gospel of John XI, 9, to support the astrological doctrine of elections. Suffice it for the present to say that the prevailing atmosphere of the Bible is one of prophecy, vision, and miracle, and that with these go, like the obverse face of a coin or medal, their inevitable accompaniments of divination, demons, and magic.
[Sidenote: Apocryphal gospels of the infancy.]
This is also the case in apocryphal literature of the New Testament which is now so much less familiar and accessible especially to English readers,[1670] but which had wide currency in the early Christian and medieval periods. We may begin with the apocryphal gospels and more particularly those dealing with the infancy and childhood of Christ. Of these two are believed to date from the second century, namely, the Gospel of James or “Gospel of the Infancy” (Protoevangelium Iacobi)[1671] and the Gospel of St. Thomas, which is mentioned by Hippolytus. However, he cites a sentence which is not in the present text—of which the manuscripts are scanty and for the most part of late date[1672]—and the gospel as we have it is not Gnostic, as he says it is, so that our version has probably been altered by some Catholic.[1673] Later in date is the Latin gospel of the Pseudo-Matthew—perhaps of the fourth or fifth century—and the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy, which is believed to be a translation from a lost Syriac original. We are the worst off of all for manuscripts of its text and apparently there is no Latin manuscript of it now extant, although a Latin text has reached us through the printed editions. Tischendorf was, however, “unwilling to omit in this new collection of the apocryphal gospels that ancient and memorable monument of the superstition of oriental Christians,” and for the same reason we shall survey its medley of miracle and magic in the present chapter. Speaking of the flight into Egypt this gospel says, “And the Lord Jesus performed a great many miracles in Egypt which are not found recorded either in the Gospel of the Infancy or in the Perfect Gospel.”[1674] Tischendorf noted the close resemblance of its first nine chapters to the Gospel of James and of chapters 36-55 to the Gospel of Thomas, while the intervening chapters “contain especially fables of the sort you may fittingly call oriental, filled with allusions to Satan and demons and sorceries and magic arts.”[1675] We find, however, the same sort of fables in the other three apocryphal gospels; there are simply more of them in the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy. It appears to be a compilation and may embody other earlier sources no longer extant as well as passages from the pseudo-James and pseudo-Thomas.
[Sidenote: Question of their date.]
There is a tendency on the part of orthodox Christian scholars to defer the writing of apocryphal works to as late a date as possible, and they seem to have a notion that they can save the credibility or purity of the miracles of the New Testament[1676] by representing such miracles as those recorded of the infancy of Christ as the inventions of a later age. And it is probably true that all these marvels were not the invention of a single century but of a succession of centuries. On the other hand, I know of no reason for thinking Christians of the first century any less credulous than Christians of the fifth century; it was not until the latter century that Pope Gelasius’ condemnation of apocryphal books was drawn up, but apocryphal books had long been in existence before that time; nor for thinking the Christians of the thirteenth century any more credulous than those of the other two centuries. It is only in our own age that Christians have become really critical of such matters. Moreover, these unacceptable miracles, whenever they were invented, were presumably invented by and accepted by Christians, who must bear the discredit for them. Whatever the century was, the same men believed in them who believed in the miracles recorded in the New Testament. If the plant has flowered into such rank superstition, can the original seed escape responsibility? The Arabic Gospel of the Infancy is no doubt an extreme instance of Christian credence in magic, but it is an instance that cannot be overlooked, whatever its date, place, or language.
[Sidenote: Their medieval influence.]
These apocryphal gospels of the Infancy, which are in part extant only in Latin, continued to be influential in the medieval period. At the beginning of it we find included in Pope Gelasius’ list of apocryphal works, published at a synod at Rome in 494,[1677] besides apocryphal gospels of Matthew and of Thomas—which last we are told, “the Manicheans use”—a Liber de infantia Salvatoris and a Liber de nativitate Salvatoris et de Maria et obstetrice. There are numerous manuscripts of such gospels in the later medieval centuries but it would not be safe to attempt to identify or classify them without examining each in detail. As Tischendorf said, the Latins do not seem to have long remained content with mere translations of the Greek pseudo-gospel of James but combined the stories told there with others from the Pseudo-Thomas or other sources into new apocryphal treatises. Thus the extant Latin apocrypha in no case reproduce the Gospel of James accurately but rather are imitated after it, and include some of it, omit some of it, embellish some of its tales, and add to it.[1678] Mâle states in his work on religious art in France in the thirteenth century that The Gospel of the Pseudo-Matthew and The Gospel of Nicodemus or Acts of Pilate were the two apocryphal gospels especially used in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.[1679]
[Sidenote: Resemblances to Apuleius and Apollonius in the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy.]
That the fables of the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy were at least not fresh from the orient is indicated by the way in which some of the incidents in the stories of Apuleius and Apollonius of Tyana are closely paralleled.[1680] In the parlor of a well furnished house where lived two sisters with their widowed mother stood a mule caparisoned in silk and with an ebony collar about his neck, “whom they kissed and were feeding.”[1681] He was their brother, transformed into a mule by the sorcery of a jealous woman one night a little before daybreak, although all the doors of the house were locked at the time. “And we,” they tell a girl who had been instantly cured of leprosy by use of perfumed water in which the Christ child had been washed and who had then become the maid-servant of the virgin Mary,[1682] “have applied to all the wise men, magicians, and diviners in the world, but they have been of no service to us.”[1683] The girl recommends them to consult Mary, who restores their brother to human form by placing the Christ child upon his back. This romantic episode is then brought to a fitting conclusion by the marriage of the brother to the girl who had assisted in his restoration to his right body. As the demon, who in the form of an artful beggar was causing the plague at Ephesus and whom Apollonius had stoned to death, turned at the last moment into a mad dog, so Satan, when forced by the presence of the Christ child to leave the boy Judas, ran away like a mad dog.[1684] The reviving of a corpse by an Egyptian prophet in the Metamorphoses in order that the dead man may tell who murdered him is paralleled in both the Arabic Infancy and the gospels of Thomas and the Pseudo-Matthew by the conduct of Jesus when accused of throwing another boy down from a house-top. The text reads: “Then the Lord Jesus going down stood over the dead boy and said with a loud voice, ‘Zeno, Zeno, who threw you down from the house-top?’ Then the dead boy answered, ‘Lord, thou didst not throw me down, but so-and-so did.’”[1685]
[Sidenote: Counteracting magic and demons.]
Many were the occasions upon which the Christ child or his mother counteracted the operations of magic or relieved persons who were possessed by demons. Kissing him cured a bride whom sorcerers had made dumb at her wedding,[1686] and a bridegroom who was kept by sorcery from enjoying his wife was cured of his impotence by the mere presence of the holy family who lodged in his house for the night.[1687] Mary’s pitying glance was sufficient to expel Satan from a woman possessed by demons.[1688] Another upright woman who was often vexed by Satan in the form of a serpent when she went to bathe in the river,[1689] which reminds one somewhat of Olympias and Nectanebus,[1690] was permanently cured by kissing the Christ child. And a girl, whose blood Satan used to suck, miraculously discomfited him when he appeared in the shape of a huge dragon by putting upon her head and about her eyes a swaddling cloth of Jesus which Mary had given to her. Fire then went forth and was scattered upon the dragon’s head and eyes, as from the blinking eyes of the artful beggar who caused the plague in the Life of Apollonius of Tyana, and he fled in a panic.[1691] A priest’s three-year-old son who was possessed by a great multitude of devils, who uttered many strange things, and who threw stones at everybody, was likewise cured by placing on his head one of Christ’s swaddling clothes which Mary had hung out to dry. In this case the devils made their escape through his mouth “in the shape of crows and serpents.”[1692] Such marvels may offend modern taste but have their probable prototype in the miracles wrought by use of Paul’s handkerchief and underwear in the New Testament and illustrate, like the placing of spittle on the eyes of the blind man, the great healing virtue then ascribed to the perspiration and other secretions and excretions of the human body.
[Sidenote: Other miracles and magic by the Christ child.]
Sick children as well as lepers were cured by the water in which Jesus had bathed or by wearing coats made of his swaddling clothes,[1693] while the child Bartholomew was snatched from the very jaws of death by the mere smell of the Christ child’s garments the moment he was placed on Jesus’ bed.[1694] On the road to Egypt is a balsam which was produced “from the sweat which ran down there from the Lord Jesus.”[1695] The Christ child cured snake-bite, in the case of his brother James by blowing on it, in the case of his playfellow, Simon the Canaanite, by forcing the serpent who had stung him to come out of its hole and suck all the poison from the wound, after which he cursed the snake “so that it immediately burst asunder and died.”[1696] When the boy Jesus took all the cloths waiting to be dyed with different colors in a dyer’s shop and threw them into the furnace, the dyer began to scold him for this mischief, but the cloths all came out of the desired colors.[1697] Jesus also miraculously remedied the defective carpentry of Joseph, who had worked for two years on a throne for the king of Jerusalem and made it too short. Jesus and Joseph took hold of the opposite sides and pulled the throne out to the required dimensions.[1698]
[Sidenote: Sometimes with injurious results.]
The usual result of the Christ child’s miracles was that all the bystanders united in praising God. But when his little playmates went home and told their parents how he had made his clay animals walk and his clay birds fly, eat, and drink, their elders said, “Take heed, children, for the future of his company, for he is a sorcerer; shun and avoid him, and from henceforth never play with him.”[1699] Indeed, if the theory of the fathers is correct that the surest hall-mark by which divine miracles may be distinguished from feats of magic is that the former are never wrought for any evil end while the latter are, it must be admitted that his contemporaries were sometimes justified in suspecting the Christ child of resort to magic. After his playmates had been thus forbidden to associate with Jesus, they hid from him in a furnace, and some women at a house near by told him that there were not boys but kids in the furnace. Jesus then actually transformed them into kids who came skipping forth at his command.[1700] It is true that he soon changed them back into human form, and that the women worshiped Christ and asserted their conviction that he was “come to save and not to destroy.” But on several subsequent occasions Jesus is represented in the apocryphal gospels of the infancy as causing the death of his playmates. When another boy broke a little fish-pool which Jesus had constructed on the Sabbath day, he said to him, “In like manner as this water has vanished, so shall thy life vanish,” and the boy presently died.[1701] When a third boy ran into Jesus and knocked him down, he said, “As thou hast thrown me down, so shalt thou fall, nor ever rise;” and that instant the boy fell down and died.[1702] When Jesus’ teacher started to whip him, his hand withered and he died. After which we are not surprised to hear Joseph say to Mary, “Henceforth we will not allow him to go out of the house; for everyone who displeases him is killed.”[1703]
[Sidenote: Further marvels from the Pseudo-Matthew.]
As has been indicated in the footnotes many of the foregoing marvels are recounted in the Pseudo-Matthew and Latin Gospel of Thomas as well as in the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy. The Pseudo-Matthew also tells how lions adored the Christ child and were bade by him to go in peace.[1704] And how he “took a dead child by the ear and suspended him from the earth in the sight of all. And they saw Jesus speaking with him like a father with his son. And his spirit returned unto him and he lived again. And all marveled thereat.”[1705] When a rich man named Joseph died and was lamented, Jesus asked his father Joseph why he did not help his dead namesake. When Joseph asked what there was that he could do, Jesus replied, “Take the handkerchief which is on your head and go and put it over the face of the corpse and say to him, ‘May Christ save you.’” Joseph followed these instructions except that he said, “Salvet te Iesus,” instead of “Salvet te Christus,” which was possibly the reason why the dead man upon reviving asked, “Who is Jesus?”[1706]
[Sidenote: Learning of the Christ child.]
While no very elaborate paraphernalia or ceremonial were involved in the miracles ascribed to the Christ child in the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy, it is perhaps worth noting that he was already possessed of all learning and nonplussed his masters, when they tried to teach him the alphabet, by asking the most abstruse questions. And when he appeared before the doctors in the temple, he expounded to them not only the books of the law,[1707] but natural philosophy, astronomy, physics and metaphysics, physiology, anatomy, and psychology. He is represented as telling them “the number of the spheres and heavenly bodies, as also their triangular, square, and sextile aspect; their progressive and retrograde motion; their twenty-fourths and sixtieths of twenty-fourths” (perhaps corresponding to our hours and minutes!) “and other things which the reason of man had never discovered.” Furthermore, “the powers also of the body, its humors and their effects; also the number of its members, and bones, veins, arteries, and nerves; the several constitutions of the body, hot and dry, cold and moist, and the tendencies of them; how the soul operates upon the body; what its various sensations and faculties are; the faculty of speaking, anger, desire; and lastly, the manner of the body’s composition and dissolution, and other things which the understanding of no creature had ever reached.”[1708] It may be added that in the apocryphal epistles supposed to have been interchanged between Christ and Abgarus, king of Edessa, that monarch writes to Christ, “I have been informed about you and your cures, which are performed without the use of herbs and medicines.”[1709]
[Sidenote: Other charges of magic against Christ and the apostles.]
Jesus is again accused of magic in The Gospel of Nicodemus or Acts of Pontius Pilate, where the Jews tell Pilate that he is a conjurer. After Pilate has been warned by his wife, the Jews repeat, “Did we not say unto thee, He is a magician? Behold, he hath caused thy wife to dream.”[1710] In the Acts of Paul and Thecla, to which Tertullian refers and which are now seen to be an excerpt from the apocryphal Acts of Paul, discovered in 1899 in a Coptic papyrus,[1711] the mob similarly cries out against Paul, “He is a magician; away with him.” In the Acts of Peter and Andrew[1712] they are both accused of being sorcerers by Onesiphorus, who also, however, denies that Peter can make a camel go through the eye of a needle. Nor is he satisfied when the feat is successfully performed with a needle and camel of Peter’s selection, but insists upon its being repeated with an animal and instrument of his own selection. Onesiphorus also has “a polluted woman” ride upon his camel’s back, apparently with the idea that this will break the magic spell. But Peter sends the camel through the eye of the needle, “which opened up like a gate,” as successfully as before, and also back again through it once more from the opposite direction.
[Sidenote: The Magi and the star.]
Some details are added by the apocrypha to the account of the star at Christ’s birth. The Arabic Gospel states that Zoroaster (Zeraduscht) had predicted the coming of the Magi, that Mary gave the Magi one of Christ’s swaddling clothes, that they were guided on their homeward journey by an angel in the form of the star which had led them to Bethlehem, and that after their return they found that the swaddling cloth would not burn in fire.[1713] The Epistle of Ignatius to the Ephesians states that this star shone with a brightness far exceeding all others, filling men with fear, and that with its coming the power of magic was destroyed and the new kingdom of God ushered in.[1714]
[Sidenote: Allegorical zoology of Barnabas.]
In the apocryphal Epistle of Barnabas occurs some of that allegorical zoology which we are apt to associate especially with the Physiologus. In its ninth chapter the hyena and weasel are adduced as examples of its contention that the Mosaic distinction between clean and unclean animals has a spiritual meaning. Thus the command not to eat the hyena means not to be an adulterer or corrupter of others, for the hyena changes its sex annually. The weasel which conceives with its mouth signifies persons with unclean mouths. In the Acts of Barnabas he cures the sick of Cyprus by laying a copy of the Gospel of Matthew upon their bodies.[1715]
[Sidenote: Traces of Gnosticism in the apocryphal Acts.]
If we turn again to the various apocryphal Acts, where we have already noted charges of magic made against the apostles, we may find traces of gnosticism which have already been noted by Anz.[1716] In the Acts of Thomas the Holy Ghost is called the pitying mother of seven houses whose rest is the eighth house of heaven. In the Acts of Philip that apostle prays, “Come now, Jesus, and give me the eternal crown of victory over every hostile power ... Lord Jesus Christ ... lead me on ... until I overcome all the cosmic powers and the evil dragon who opposes us. Now therefore Lord Jesus Christ make me to come to Thee in the air.” The Acts of John, too, speak of overcoming fire and darkness and angels and demons and archons and powers of darkness who separate man from God.
[Sidenote: Legend of John.]
We deal in another chapter with the struggle of the apostles with Simon Magus as recounted in the apocryphal Acts of Peter and Paul, and with similar legends of the contests of other apostles with magicians. Here, however, we may mention some of the marvels in the apocryphal legend of St. John, supposed to have been written by his disciple Procharus and “which deluded the Greek Church by its air of sincerity and its extreme precision of detail,”[1717] although it does not seem to have reached the west until the sixteenth century. John is represented as drinking without injury a poison which had killed two criminals, and as reviving two corpses without going near them by directing an incredulous pagan to lay his cloak over them. A Stoic philosopher had persuaded some young men to embrace the life of poverty by converting their property into gems and then pounding the gems to pieces. John made the criticism that this wealth might have better been distributed among the poor, and when challenged to do so by the Stoic, prayed to God and had the gems made whole again. Later when the young men longed for their departed wealth, he turned the pebbles on the seashore into gold and precious stones, a miracle which is said to have persuaded the medieval alchemists that he possessed the secret of the philosopher’s stone.[1718] At any rate Adam of St. Victor in the twelfth century wrote the following lines concerning St. John in a chant to be used in the church service:
Cum gemmarum partes fractas Solidasset, has distractas Tribuit pauperibus; Inexhaustum fert thesaurum Qui de virgis fecit aurum, Gemmas de lapidibus.[1719]
[Sidenote: Legend of St. Sousnyos.]
The brief legend of St. Sousnyos, which Basset has included in his edition of Ethiopian Apocrypha,[1720] is all magic, beginning with an incantation or magic prayer against disease and demons. There is also a Slavonic version. This Sousnyos is presumably the same as the Sisinnios who is said by the author of the apocryphal Acts of Archelaus,[1721] forged about 330-340 A. D., to have abandoned Mani, embraced Christianity, and revealed to Archelaus secret teachings which enabled him to triumph over his adversary.
[Sidenote: Old Testament apocrypha of the Christian era.]
While on the subject, mention may be made of two works which properly belong to the apocrypha of the Old Testament, but which first appear during the Christian era and so fall within our period. The Ascension of Isaiah,[1722] of which the old Latin version was printed at Venice in 1522, and which dates back to the second century, is something like the Book of Enoch, describing Isaiah’s ascent through the seven heavens and vision of the mission of Christ. In the Book of Baruch, of which the original version was written in Greek by a Christian of the third or fourth century,[1723] the most interesting episode is the magic sleep into which, like Rip Van Winkle, Abimelech falls during the destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans. In the legend of Jeremiah the prophet’s soul is absent from his body on one occasion for three days, while on another occasion he dresses up a stone to impersonate himself before the populace who are trying to stone him to death, in order that he may gain time to make certain revelations to Abimelech and Baruch. When he has had his say, the stone asks the people why they persist in stoning it instead of Jeremiah, against whom they then turn their missiles.[1724]
Such is no exhaustive listing but rather a few examples of the encouragement given to belief in magic by the Christian Apocrypha.
XVII. THE RECOGNITIONS OF CLEMENT AND SIMON MAGUS
The Pseudo-Clementines—Was Rufinus the sole medieval version?—Previous Greek versions—Date of the original version—Internal evidence—Resemblances to Apuleius and Philostratus—Science and religion—Interest in natural science—God and nature—Sin and nature—Attitude to astrology—Arguments against genethlialogy—The virtuous Seres—Theory of demons—Origin of magic—Frequent accusations of magic—Marvels of magic—How distinguish miracle from magic?—Deceit in magic—Murder of a boy—Magic is evil—Magic is an art—Other accounts of Simon Magus: Justin Martyr to Hippolytus—Peter’s account in the Didascalia et Constitutiones Apostolorum—Arnobius, Cyril, and Philastrius—Apocryphal Acts of Peter and Paul—An account ascribed to Marcellus—Hegesippus—A sermon on Simon’s fall—Simon Magus in medieval art.
“The Truth herself shall receive thee a wanderer and a stranger, and enroll thee a citizen of her own city.” —Recognitions I, 13.
[Sidenote: The Pseudo-Clementines.]
The starting-point and chief source for this chapter will be the writings known as the Pseudo-Clementines and more particularly the Latin version commonly called The Recognitions. We shall then note other accounts of its villain-hero, Simon Magus, in patristic literature.[1725] The Pseudo-Clementines, as the name implies, are works or different versions of one work ascribed to Clement of Rome, who is represented as writing to James, the brother of the Lord, an account of events and discussions in which he and the apostle Peter had participated not long after the crucifixion. This Pseudo-Clementine literature has a double character, combining romantic narrative concerning Peter, Simon Magus, and the family of Clement with long, argumentative, didactic, and doctrinal discussions and dialogues in which the same persons participate but Peter takes the leading and most authoritative part. Not only the authorship, origin, and date, but even the title or titles and the make-up and arrangement of the various versions and their original are doubtful or disputed matters. The versions now extant and published seem by no means to have been the only ones, but we will describe them first. In Greek we have the version known as The Homilies in twenty books, in which the didactic element preponderates. It is extant in only two manuscripts of the twelfth and fourteenth centuries at Paris and Rome,[1726] but is also preserved in part in epitomes. Different from it is the Latin version in which the narrative element plays a greater part.
[Sidenote: Was Rufinus the sole medieval version?]
This Latin version, now usually referred to as The Recognitions, because the main point in its plot is the successive bringing together again of, and recognition of one another by, the members of a family long separated, is the translation made by Rufinus, who is last heard from in 410. It is usually divided into ten books. Numerous manuscripts of this version attest its popularity and influence in the middle ages, when we early find Isidore of Seville quoting Clement several times as an authority on natural science.[1727] Arevalus, however, thought that Isidore used some other version of the Pseudo-Clementines than that of Rufinus,[1728] and in the medieval period another title was common, namely, The Itinerary of Clement, or The Itinerary of Peter.[1729] William of Auvergne, for instance, in the first half of the thirteenth century cites the Itinerarium Clementis or “Book of the disputations of Peter against Simon Magus.”[1730] This Itinerary of Clement also heads the list of works condemned as apocryphal by Pope Gelasius at a synod at Rome in 494,[1731] a list reproduced by Vincent of Beauvais in his Speculum naturale in the thirteenth century[1732] and in the previous century rather more accurately by Hugh of St. Victor in his Didascalicon.[1733] In all three cases the full title is given in practically the same words, “The Itinerary by the name of the Apostle Peter which is called Saint Clement’s, an apocryphal work in eight books.”[1734] Here we encounter a difficulty, since as we have said The Recognitions are in ten books. We find, however, that in another passage[1735] Vincent correctly cites the ninth book of The Recognitions as Clement’s ninth book, and that the number of books into which The Recognitions is divided varies in the manuscripts, and that they, too, more often call it The Itinerary of Clement or even apply other designations. Rabanus Maurus in the ninth century quotes an utterance of the apostle Peter from The History of Saint Clement, but the passage is found in The Recognitions.[1736] Vincent of Beauvais also quotes “the blessed apostle Peter in a certain letter attached to The Itinerary of Clement.” No letter by Peter is prefaced to the printed text of The Recognitions, nor does Rufinus mention such a letter, although he does speak in his preface of a letter by Clement which he has already translated elsewhere. Prefixed to the printed Homilies, however, and in the manuscripts found also with The Recognitions, are letters of Peter and Clement respectively to James. But the passage quoted by Vincent does not occur in either, but comes from the tenth book of The Recognitions.[1737] It would seem, therefore, despite variations in the number of books and in the arrangement of material, that the Latin version by Rufinus was the only one current in the middle ages, but we cannot be sure of this until all the extant manuscripts have been more carefully examined.[1738]
[Sidenote: Previous Greek versions.]
The version by Rufinus differed from previous ones not only in being in Latin but also in various omissions which he admits he made and perhaps other changes to suit it to his Latin audience. That there was already more than one version in Greek he shows in his preface by describing another text than that upon which his translation or adaptation was based. Neither of these two Greek texts appears to have been the same as the present Homilies.[1739] Yet The Homilies were apparently in existence at that time, since a Syriac manuscript of 411 A. D. contains four books of The Homilies and three of The Recognitions,[1740] thus in itself furnishing an illustration of the ease with which new versions might be compounded from old. Both The Homilies and The Recognitions as they have reached us would seem to be confusions and perversions of this sort, as their incidents are obviously not arranged in correct order. For instance, when the story of The Recognitions begins Christ is still alive and reports of His miracles are reaching Rome; the same year Barnabas pays a visit to Rome and Clement almost immediately follows him back to Syria, making the passage from Rome to Caesarea in fifteen days;[1741] but on his arrival there he meets Peter who tells him that “a week of years” have elapsed since the crucifixion and of other intervening events involving a considerable lapse of time. Or again, in the third book of The Recognitions Simon is said to have sunk his magical paraphernalia in the sea and gone to Rome, but as late as the tenth and last book we find him still in Antioch and with enough paraphernalia left to transform the countenance of Faustus.
[Sidenote: Date of the original version.]
Yet this late and misarranged version on which Rufinus bases his text must have been already in existence for some time, since he confesses that he has been a long while about his translation. The virgin Sylvia who “once enjoined it upon” him to “render Clement into our language” is now spoken of as “of venerable memory,” and it is to Bishop Gaudentius that Rufinus “after many delays” in his old age “at length” presents the work. We might thus infer that the original and presumably more self-consistent Pseudo-Clementine narrative, which Rufinus evidently does not use, must date back to a much earlier period. We hear from other sources of The Circuits or Periodoi of Peter by Clement, but this may have been the version translated by Rufinus.[1742] Conservative Christian scholars regard as the oldest unmistakable allusion to the Pseudo-Clementines that by Eusebius early in the fourth century, who, without giving any specific titles, speaks of certain “verbose and lengthy writings, containing dialogues of Peter forsooth and Apion,” which are ascribed to Clement but are really of recent origin. As for the date of the original work from which Homilies and Recognitions are derived,[1743] from 200 to 280 A. D. is suggested by Harnack and his school, who take middle ground between the extreme contentions of Hilgenfeld and Chapman. But the original Pseudo-Clement is supposed to have utilized The Teachings of Peter and The Acts of Peter, which Waitz would date between 135 and 210 A. D.[1744]
[Sidenote: Internal evidence.]
The work itself, even in the perverted form preserved by Rufinus, makes pretensions to the highest Christian antiquity. Not only is it addressed to James and put into the mouth of Clement, but Paul is never mentioned, and no book of the New Testament is cited by name, while sayings of Jesus are cited which are not found in the Bible. Christ is often alluded to in a veiled and mystic fashion as “the true prophet,” who had appeared aforetime to Abraham and Moses, and interesting and vivid incidental glimpses are given of what purports to be the life of an early Christian community and perhaps is that of the Ebionites, Essenes, or some Gnostic sect. Emphasis is laid upon the purifying power of baptism, upon Peter’s practice of bathing early every morning, preferably in the sea or running water, upon secret prayers and meetings, a separate table for the initiated, esoteric discussions of religion at cock-crow and in the night, and upon power over demons. All this may be mere clever invention, but there certainly is an atmosphere of verisimilitude about it; and it is rather odd that a later writer should be “very careful to avoid anachronisms,” in whose account as it now stands are such glaring chronological confusions as those already noted concerning Clement’s voyage to Caesarea and Simon’s departure for Rome. But, as in the case of the New Testament Apocrypha, the exact date of composition makes little difference for our purpose, for which it is enough that the Pseudo-Clementines played an important part in the first thirteen centuries of Christian thought viewed as a whole. Eusebius and Epiphanius may find them unpalatable in certain respects and reject them as heretical, but Basil and Gregory utilize their arguments against astrology. Gelasius may classify them as apocryphal, but Vincent of Beauvais justifies a discriminating use of the apocryphal books in general and cites this one in particular more than once as an authority, and the incidents of its story were embodied, as we shall see, in medieval art.
[Sidenote: Resemblances to Apuleius and Philostratus.]
The same resemblance to the works of Apuleius and Philostratus that we noted in the case of an apocryphal gospel is observable in the Pseudo-Clementines. We see in The Recognitions the same mixed interest in natural science and in magic combined with religion and romantic incident that characterized the variegated and motley page of the author of the Metamorphoses and the biographer of Apollonius of Tyana. It is probably only a coincidence that two of the works of Apuleius are dedicated to a Faustinus whom he calls “my son,” while Clement’s father is named Faustus or Faustinianus, and the legend of Faust is believed to originate with him and the episodes in which he is concerned.[1745] Less accidental may be the connection between Peter’s religious sea-bathing and that purification in the sea by which the hero of the Metamorphoses began the process by which he succeeded in regaining his lost human form. More considerable are the detailed parallels to the work of Philostratus.[1746] Peter corresponds roughly to Apollonius and Clement to Damis, while the wizards and magi are ably personified by the famous Simon Magus. If Apollonius abstained from all meat and wine and wore linen garments, Peter lives upon “bread alone, with olives, and seldom even with pot-herbs; and my dress,” he says, “is what you see, a tunic with a pallium: and having these, I require nothing more.”[1747] Like Philostratus the Pseudo-Clement speaks of bones of enormous size which are still to be seen as proof of the existence of giants in former ages;[1748] and the accounts of the Brahmans and allusions to the Scythians in the Life of Apollonius of Tyana are paralleled in The Recognitions by a series of brief chapters on these and other strange races.[1749] Peter is, of course, a Jew, not a Hellene like Apollonius, but in his train are men who are thoroughly trained in Greek philosophy and capable of discussing its problems at length. They also are not without appreciation of pagan art and turn aside, with Peter’s consent, to visit a temple upon an island and “to gaze earnestly” upon “the wonderful columns” and “very magnificent works of Phidias.”[1750] Just as Apollonius knew all languages without having ever studied them, so Peter is so filled with the Spirit of God that he is “full of all knowledge” and “not ignorant even of Greek learning”; but to descend from his usual divine themes to discuss it is considered to be rather beneath him. Clement, however, felt the need of coaching Peter up a little in Greek mythology.[1751] This mingled attitude of contempt for “the babblings of the Greeks” when compared to divine revelation, and of respect for Greek philosophy when compared with anything else is, it is hardly necessary to say, a very common one with Christian writers throughout the Roman Empire.
[Sidenote: Science and religion.]
The same attitude prevails toward natural science. At the very beginning of the Clementines the curiosity of the ancient world in regard to things of nature is shown by the question which someone propounded to Barnabas when he began to preach, at Rome according to The Recognitions, at Alexandria according to The Homilies, of the Son of God. The heckler wanted to know why so small a creature as a fly has not only six feet but wings in addition, while the elephant, despite its enormous bulk, has only four feet and no wings at all. Barnabas did not answer the question, although he asserted that he could if he wished to, making the excuse that it was not fitting to speak of mere creatures to those who were still ignorant of their Creator.[1752]
[Sidenote: Interest in natural science.]
This unwillingness to discuss natural questions by no means continues characteristic of the Clementines, however. Not only does Peter explain to Clement the creation of the world and propound the extraordinary[1753] doctrine that after completing the process of creation God “set an angel as chief over the angels, a spirit over the spirits, a star over the stars, a demon over the demons, a bird over the birds, a beast over the beasts, a serpent over the serpents, a fish over the fishes,” and “over men a man who is Christ Jesus.”[1754] Not only does he later in public defend baptism with water on the ground that “all things are produced from waters” and that waters were first created.[1755] We also find Niceta accepting the Greek hypothesis of four elements, of the sphericity of the universe, and of the motions of the heavenly bodies “assigned to them by fixed laws and periods,” citing Plato’s Timaeus, mentioning Aristotle’s introduction of a fifth element,[1756] disputing the atomic theory of Epicurus,[1757] and alluding to “mechanical science.”[1758] He further discusses the generation of plants, animals, and human beings as evidences of divine design and providence,[1759] in which connection he collects a number of examples of marvelous gen eration of animals such as moles from earth and vipers from ashes, and affirms that “the crow conceives through the mouth and the weasel generates through the ear.”[1760] Simon Magus declared himself immortal on the theory, which we shall find cropping out again in the thirteenth century in Roger Bacon and Peter of Abano, that his flesh was “so compacted by the power of his divinity that it can endure to eternity.”[1761] On the other hand, Niceta describes the action of the intestines in a fairly intelligent manner,[1762] and tells how the blood flows like water from a fountain, “and first borne along in one channel, and then spreading through innumerable veins as through canals, irrigates the entire territory of the human body with vital streams.”[1763] A little later on Aquila gives a natural explanation of rainbows.[1764]
[Sidenote: God and nature.]
There is noticeable, it is true, a tendency, common in patristic literature and found even among those fathers who hold the dualism of the Manichees in the deepest detestation, to make a distinction between God and nature and to attribute any flaws in the universe to the latter.[1765] Niceta cannot agree with “those who speak of nature instead of God and declare that all things were made by nature”; he holds that God created the universe. But Aquila, who supports his brother in the discussion, seems to think that God’s responsibility for the universe ceased, at least in part, after it was once created. At any rate he admits that “in this world some things are done in an orderly and some in a disorderly fashion. Those things therefore,” he continues, “that are done rationally, believe that they are done by Providence; but those that are done irrationally and inordinately, believe that they befall naturally and happen accidentally.”[1766]
[Sidenote: Sin and nature.]
But even nature sometimes rises up against the sins of mankind according to Peter and his associates. Aquila believes that the sins of men are the cause of pestilences;[1767] that “when chastisement is inflicted upon men according to the will of God, he” (i. e. the Sun, already called “that good servant” and whom the early Christians found it difficult to cease to personify) “glows more fiercely and burns up the world with more vehement fires”;[1768] and that “those who have become acquainted with prophetic discourse know when and for what reason blight, hail, pestilence, and such like have occurred in every generation, and for what sins these have been sent as a punishment.”[1769] Peter gives the impression that nature sometimes acts rather independently of God in thus punishing the wicked. He says: “But this also I would have you know, that upon such souls God does not take vengeance directly, but His whole creation rises up and inflicts punishments upon the impious. And although in the present world the goodness of God bestows the light of the world and the services of the earth alike upon the pious and the impious, yet not without grief does the Sun afford his light and the other elements perform their services to the impious. And, in short, sometimes even in opposition to the goodness of the Creator, the elements are worn out by the crimes of the wicked; and hence it is that either the fruit of the earth is blighted, or the composition of the air is vitiated, or the heat of the sun is increased beyond measure, or there is an excess of rain or cold.”[1770] This is a close approach to the notion of The Book of Enoch that human sin upsets the world of nature, and an even closer approach to the theory of the Brahmans in The Life of Apollonius of Tyana that prolonged drought is a punishment visited by the world-soul upon human sinfulness.
[Sidenote: Attitude to astrology.]
Such vestiges of the world-soul doctrine, such a tendency to ascribe emotion and will to the elements and planets, to personify them, and to think of God as ruling the world indirectly through them, prepare us to find an attitude rather favorable to astrological theory. Indeed, in the first book of The Recognitions[1771] we are told in so many words that the Creator adorned the visible heaven with stars, sun, and moon in order that “they might be for an indication of things past, present, and future,” and that these celestial signs, while seen by all, are “understood only by the learned and intelligent.” Astrology is respectfully described as “the science of mathesis,”[1772] and, as was common in the Roman Empire, astrologers are called mathematici.[1773] A defender even of the most extreme pretensions of the art is not abused as a charlatan but is courteously greeted as “so learned a man,”[1774] and all admire his eloquence, grave manners, and calm speech, and accord him a respectful hearing.[1775] Astrology, far from being regarded as necessarily contrary to religion, is thought to furnish arguments for the existence of God, and it is said that Abraham, “being an astrologer, was able from the rational system of the stars to recognize the Creator, while all other men were in error, and understood that all things are regulated by His Providence.”[1776] The number seven is somewhat emphasized[1777] and the twelve apostles are called the twelve months of Christ who is the acceptable year of the Lord.[1778] Somewhat similarly the Gnostic followers of the heretic Valentinus made much of the Duodecad, a group of twelve aeons, and believed, according to Irenaeus, “that Christ suffered in the twelfth month. For their opinion is that He continued to preach for one year only after His baptism.”[1779] Peter, too, has a group of twelve disciples.[1780] Niceta speaks of “man who is a microcosm in the great world.”[1781] It is admitted that the stars exert evil as well as good influence,[1782] and that the astrologer “can indicate the evil desire which malign virtue produces.”[1783] But it is contended that, “possessing freedom of the will, we sometimes resist our desires and sometimes yield to them,” and that no astrologer can predict beforehand which course we will take.
[Sidenote: Arguments against genethlialogy.]
In fine, astrology is criticized adversely only when it goes to the length of contending that “there is neither any God, nor any worship, neither is there any Providence in the world, but all things are done by fortuitous chance and genesis”; that “whatever your genesis contains, that shall befall you”;[1784] and that the constellations force men to commit murder, adultery, and other crimes.[1785] On this point Niceta and Aquila, and finally Clement himself, have long discussions with an aged adept in genethlialogy which fill a large portion of the last three books of The Recognitions, and include a dozen chapters which are little more than an extract from The Laws of Countries of Bardesanes. Divine Providence and human free will are defended, and genethlialogy is represented as an error which has received confirmation through the operations of demons.[1786] It is asserted that men can be kept from committing crimes by fear of punishment and by law, even if they are naturally so inclined, and races like the Seres (Chinese) and Brahmans are adduced as examples of entire races of men who never commit the crimes into which men are supposed to be forced by the constellations. The argument is also advanced, “Since God is righteous and since He Himself made human nature, how could it be that He should place genesis in opposition to us, which should compel us to sin, and then that He should punish us when we do sin?”[1787] It is further charged that the constellations are so complicated, that for any given moment one astrologer may infer a favorable and another a disastrous influence,[1788] and that most successful explanations of the effects of the stars are made after the event, like dreams of which men can make nothing at the time, but “when any event occurs, then they adapt what they saw in the dream to what has occurred.”[1789] Finally the aged defender of genesis, who believed that his own fate and that of his wife had been accurately prescribed by their horoscopes, turns out to be Faustinianus (called Faustus in The Homilies), the long-lost father of Clement, Niceta, and Aquila; is also restored to his wife; and learns that his previous interpretation of events from the stars was quite erroneous.[1790]
[Sidenote: The virtuous Seres.]
The ideal picture of the Seres or Chinese, “who dwell at the beginning of the world,” which The Recognitions apparently borrows from Bardesanes, is perhaps worth repeating here as an odd admission that a non-Christian people can attain a state of moral perfection and sinlessness, as well as an interesting bit of ancient ethnology. “In all that country which is very large there is neither temple nor image nor harlot nor adulteress, nor is any thief brought to trial. But neither is any man ever slain there.... For this reason they are not chastened with those plagues of which we have spoken; they live to extreme old age, and die without sickness.”[1791] Perhaps these virtuous Seres are the blameless Hyperboreans in another guise.
[Sidenote: Theory of demons.]
Demons and angels abound in The Recognitions. One may be rebuked and scourged at night by an angel of God.[1792] Peter says that every nation has an angel, since God has divided the earth into seventy-two sections and appointed an angel as governor and prince of each.[1793] Once, before beginning to preach, Peter expelled demons from a number of persons in the audience.[1794] In another passage is described the cure of a girl of twenty-seven who for twenty years had been vexed by an unclean spirit and had been shut up in a closet in chains because of her violence and superhuman strength. The mere presence of Peter put this demon to rout and the chains fell off the girl of their own accord.[1795] Besides these personal encounters with demons, the theory of demoniacal possession is discussed more than once, and anything of which the author does not approve, such as the art of horoscopes, heathen oracles, the excesses of pagan rites and festivals, and the animal gods of the Egyptians, is attributed to the influence of demons.[1796] One becomes susceptible to demoniacal possession who eats meat sacrificed to idols or who merely eats and drinks immoderately.[1797] Demons are apt to get into the very bowels of those who frequent drunken banquets.[1798] Incontinence, too, is accompanied by demons whose “noxious breath” produces “an intemperate and vicious progeny.... And therefore parents are responsible for their children’s defects of this sort, because they have not observed the law of intercourse.”[1799] As much care should be taken in human generation as in the sowing of crops. But while demons abound, God has given every Christian power over them, since they may be driven out by uttering “the threefold name of blessedness.”[1800] Moreover, “what is spoken by the true God, whether by prophets or varied visions, is always true; but what is foretold by demons is not always true.”[1801]
[Sidenote: Origin of magic.]
With demons is associated the origin of the magic art. “Certain angels ... taught men that demons could be made to obey man by certain arts, that is, by magical invocations.”[1802] The first magicians were Ham and his son Mesraim, from whom the Egyptians, Babylonians, and Assyrians are descended, and who tried to draw sparks from the stars[1803] but set himself on fire “and was consumed by the demon whom he had accosted with too great importunity.”[1804] But on this account he was called Zoroaster or “living star” after his death. Moreover, the magic art did not perish but was transmitted to Nimrod “as by a flash.”[1805] With this may be compared the slightly different account of the origin of magic given by Epiphanius in the Panarion, written about 374-375 A. D. Magic is older than heresy and was already in existence before the time of Ham or Mesraim in the antediluvian days of Jared, when it coexisted with “pharmacy,” a term here used to cover sorcery and poisoning, licentiousness, adultery, and injustice. After the flood Epiphanius mentions Nimrod (Νεβρώδ) as the first tyrant and the inventor of the evil disciplines of astrology and magic. He states that the Greeks incorrectly confuse him with Zoroaster whom they regard as the founder of magic and astrology. According to Epiphanius, “pharmacy” and magic passed from Egypt to Greece in the time of Cecrops.[1806]
[Sidenote: Frequent accusations of magic.]
In The Recognitions everyone, Christian, heretic, pagan, and philosopher, condemns or professes to condemn magic, and reference is made to the laws of the Roman emperors against it.[1807] But Christians, pagans, and heretics, while claiming divine power and protection for themselves, freely accuse one another of the practice of magic. An unnamed person, by whom Paul is perhaps meant, stirs up the people of Jerusalem to persecute the apostolic community there as “most miserable men, who are deceived by Simon, a magician.”[1808] The guards at the sepulcher, unable to prevent the resurrection, said that Jesus was a magician, a charge which is repeated by one of the scribes and by Simon Magus. Simon also calls Peter a magician on more than one occasion.[1809] Peter, of course, makes similar charges against Simon; he had been especially sent by James to Caesarea in order to refute this magician who was giving himself out to be the Stans or Christ.[1810] The gods of Greek mythology, too, are accused of having resorted to magic transformations and sorcery.[1811] Philosophy, however, escapes the accusation of magic in The Recognitions,[1812] and it was a philosopher who deterred Clement, before the latter had become a Christian, from his plan of investigating the problem of the immortality of the soul by hiring an Egyptian magician to evoke a soul from the infernal regions by the art of necromancy.[1813] The philosopher condemned such an attempt as unlawful, impious, and “hateful to the Divinity.”[1814]
[Sidenote: Marvels of magic.]
But while magic is condemned, its great powers are admitted. Simon Magus makes great boasts of the marvels which he can perform. These include becoming invisible, boring through rocks and mountains as if they were clay, passing through fire without being burned, flying through the air, loosing bonds and barriers, transformation into animal shapes, animation of statues, production of new plants or trees in a moment, and growing beards upon little boys.[1815] He also asserted that he had formed a boy by turning air into water and the water into blood, and then solidifying this into flesh, a feat which he regarded as superior to the creation of Adam from earth. Later Simon unmade him and restored him to the air, “but not until I had placed his image and picture in my bedchamber as a proof and memorial of my work.”[1816] Not only does Simon himself make such boasts; Niceta and Aquila, who had been his disciples before their conversion by Zaccheus, also bear witness to his amazing feats. “Who would not be astonished at the wonderful things which he does? Who would not think that he was a god come down from heaven for the salvation of men?”[1817] He can fly through the air, or so mingle himself with fire as to become one body with it, he can make statues walk and dogs of brass bark. “Yea, he has also been seen to make bread of stones.”[1818] When Dositheus tried to beat Simon, the rod passed through his body as if it had been smoke.[1819] The woman called Luna who goes about with Simon was seen by a crowd to look out of all the windows of a tower at the same time,[1820] an illusion possibly produced by mirrors. When Simon fears arrest, he transforms the face of Faustinianus into the likeness of his own, in order that Faustinianus may be arrested in his place.[1821]
[Sidenote: How distinguish miracle from magic?]
So great, indeed, are the marvels wrought by Simon and by magicians generally that Niceta asks Peter how they may be distinguished from divine signs and Christian miracles, and in what respect anyone sins who infers from the similarity of these signs and wonders either that Simon Magus is divine or that Christ was a magician. Speaking first of Pharaoh’s magicians, Niceta asks, “For if I had been there, should I not have thought, from the fact that the magicians did like things (to those which Moses did), either that Moses was a magician, or that the feats displayed by the magicians were divinely wrought?... But if he sins who believes those who work signs, how shall it appear that he also does not sin who has believed on our Lord for His signs and occult virtues?” Peter’s reply is that Simon’s magic does not benefit anyone, while the Christian miracles of healing the sick and expelling demons are performed for the good of humanity. To Antichrist alone among workers of magic will it be permitted at the end of the world to mix in some beneficial acts with his evil marvels. Moreover, “by this means going beyond his bounds, and being divided against himself, and fighting against himself, he shall be destroyed.”[1822] Later in The Recognitions, however, Aquila states that even the magic of the present has found ways of imitating by contraries the expulsion of demons by the word of God, that it can counteract the poisons of serpents by incantations, and can effect cures “contrary to the word and power of God.” He adds, “The magic art has also discovered ministries contrary to the angels of God, placing the evocation of souls and the figments of demons in opposition to these.”[1823]
[Sidenote: Deceit in magic.]
But while the marvels of magic are admitted, there is a feeling that there is something deceitful and unreal about them. The teachings of the true prophet, we are told, “contain nothing subtle, nothing composed by magic art to deceive,”[1824] while Simon is “a deceiver and magician.”[1825] Nor is he deceitful merely in his religious teaching and his opposition to Peter; even his boasts of magic power are partly false. Aquila, his former disciple, says, “But when he spoke thus of the production of sprouts and the perforation of the mountain, I was confounded on this account, because he wished to deceive even us, in whom he seemed to place confidence; for we knew that those things had been from the days of our fathers, which he represented as having been done by himself lately.”[1826] Moreover, not only does Simon deceive others; he is himself deceived by demons as Peter twice asserts:[1827] “He is deluded by demons, yet he thinks that he sees the very substance of the soul.” “Although in this he is deluded by demons, yet he has persuaded himself that he has the soul of a murdered boy ministering to him in whatever he pleases to employ it.”
[Sidenote: Murder of a boy.]
This story of having sacrificed a pure boy for purposes of magic or divination was a stock charge, which we have previously heard made against Apollonius of Tyana and which was also told of the early Christians by their pagan enemies and of the Jews and heretics in the middle ages. Simon is said to have confessed to Niceta and Aquila, when they asked how he worked his magic, that he received assistance from “the soul of a boy, unsullied and violently slain, and invoked by unutterable adjurations.” He went on to explain that “the soul of man holds the next place after God, when once it is set free from the darkness of the body. And immediately it acquires prescience, wherefore it is invoked in necromancy.” When Aquila asked why the soul did not take vengeance upon its slayer instead of performing the behests of magicians, Simon answered that the soul now had the last judgment too vividly before it to indulge in vengeance, and that the angels presiding over such souls do not permit them to return to earth unless “adjured by someone greater than themselves.”[1828] Niceta then indignantly interposed, “And do you not fear the day of judgment, who do violence to angels and invoke souls?” As a matter of fact, the charge that Simon had murdered or violently slain a boy is rather overdrawn, since the boy in question was the one whom he had made from air in the first place and whom he simply turned back into air again, claiming, however, to have thereby produced an unsullied human soul. According to The Homilies, however, he presently confided to Niceta and Aquila that the human soul did not survive the death of the body and that a demon really responded to his invocations.[1829]
[Sidenote: Magic is evil.]
Nevertheless, the charge of murder thus made against Simon illustrates the criminal character here as usually ascribed to magic. Simon is said to be “wicked above measure,” and to depend upon “magic arts and wicked devices,” and Peter accuses him of “acting by nefarious arts.”[1830] Simon in his turn calls Peter “a magician, a godless man, injurious, cunning, ignorant, and professing impossibilities,” and again “a magician, a sorcerer, a murderer.”[1831]
[Sidenote: Magic is an art.]
A further characteristic of magic which comes out clearly in The Recognitions is that it is an art. Demons and souls of the dead may have a great deal to do with it, but it also requires a human operator and makes use of materials drawn from the world of nature. It was by anointing his face with an ointment which the magician had compounded that the countenance of Faustinianus was transformed into the likeness of Simon, while Appion and Anubion, who anointed their faces with the juice of a certain herb, were thereby enabled still to recognize Faustinianus as himself.[1832] In another passage one of Simon’s disciples who has deserted him and come to Peter tells how Simon had made him carry on his back to the seashore a bundle “of his polluted and accursed secret things.” Simon took the bundle out to sea in a boat and later returned without it.[1833] Simon not only employed natural materials in his magic, but was regarded as a learned man, even by his enemies. He is “by profession a magician, yet exceedingly well trained in Greek literature.”[1834] He is “a most vehement orator, trained in the dialectic art, and in the meshes of syllogisms; and what is most serious of all, he is greatly skilled in the magic art.”[1835] And he engages with Peter in theological debates. It is also interesting to note as an illustration of the connection between magic and experimental science that Simon, in boasting of his feats of magic, says, “For already I have achieved many things by way of experiment.”[1836]
[Sidenote: Other accounts of Simon Magus: Justin Martyr to Hippolytus.]
In the Pseudo-Clementines we are told that Simon intended to go to Rome, but The Recognitions and The Homilies deal only with the conflicts between Peter and Simon in various Syrian cities and do not follow them to Rome, where, as other Christian writers tell us, they had yet other encounters in which Simon finally came to his bitter end. Justin Martyr, writing about the middle of the second century, states that Simon, a Samaritan of Gitto, came to Rome in the reign of Claudius and performed such feats of magic by demon aid that a statue was erected to him as a god. In this matter of the statue Justin is thought to have confused Semo Sancus, a Sabine deity, with Simon. Justin adds that almost all Samaritans and a few persons from other nations still believe in Simon as the first God, and that a disciple of his, named Menander, deceived many by magic at Antioch. Justin complains that the followers of these men are still called Christians and on the other hand that the emperors do not persecute them as they do other Christians, although Justin charges them with practicing promiscuous sexual intercourse as well as magic.[1837] Irenaeus gives a very similar account.[1838] Origen, as we have seen, denied that there were more than thirty of Simon’s followers left,[1839] but his contemporary Tertullian wrote, “At this very time even the heretical dupes of this same Simon are so much elated by the extravagant pretensions of their art, that they undertake to bring up from Hades the souls of the prophets themselves. And I suppose that they can do so under cover of a lying wonder.”[1840] But Origen and Tertullian add nothing to the story of Simon Magus himself. Hippolytus, too, implies that Simon still has followers, since he devotes a number of chapters to stating and refuting Simon’s doctrines and to “teaching anew the parrots of Simon that Christ ... was not Simon.”[1841] But Hippolytus also gives further details concerning Simon’s visit to Rome, stating that he there encountered the apostles and was repeatedly opposed by Peter, until finally Simon declared that if he were buried alive he would rise again upon the third day. His disciples buried him, as they were directed, but he never reappeared, “for he was not the Christ.”
[Sidenote: Peter’s account in the Didascalia et Constitutiones Apostolorum.]
Peter himself is represented as briefly recounting his struggle at Rome with Simon Magus in the Didascalia Apostolorum, an apocryphal work of probably the third century, extant in Syriac and Latin, and more fully in the parallel passage of the Greek Constitutiones Apostolorum, written perhaps about 400 A. D.[1842] Peter found Simon at Rome drawing many away from the church as well as seducing the Gentiles by his “magic operation and virtues,” or, in the Greek version, “magic experiments and the working of demons.”[1843] In the Syriac and Latin account Peter then states that one day he saw Simon flying through the air. “And standing beneath I said, ‘In the virtue of the holy name, Jesus, I cut off your virtues.’ And so falling he broke the arch (thigh?) of his foot (leg?).”[1844] But he did not die, since Peter goes on to say that while “many then departed from him, others who were worthy of him remained with him.” In the longer Greek version Simon announced his flight in the theater. While all eyes were turned on Simon, Peter prayed against him. Meanwhile Simon mounted aloft into mid-air, borne up, Peter says, by demons, and telling the people that he was ascending to heaven, whence he would return bringing them good tidings. The people applauded him as a god, but Peter stretched forth his hands to heaven, supplicating God through the Lord Jesus to dash down the corrupter and curtail the power of the demons. He asked further, however, that Simon might not be killed by his fall but merely bruised. Peter also addressed Simon and the evil powers who were supporting him, requiring that he might fall and become a laughing-stock to those who had been deceived by him. Thereupon Simon fell with a great commotion and bruised his bottom and the soles of his feet. It will be noted that here, as in the accounts by some other authors, Peter alone struggles with Simon Magus, lending color to the Tübingen theory once suggested in connection with the Pseudo-Clementines, that Simon Magus is meant to represent the apostle Paul.
[Sidenote: Arnobius, Cyril, and Philastrius.]
Arnobius, writing about 300 A. D., gives a somewhat different account of Simon’s mode of flight and fall. He says that the people of Rome “saw the chariot of Simon Magus and his four fiery horses blown away by the mouth of Peter and vanish at the name of Christ. They saw, I say, him who had trusted false gods and been betrayed by them in their fright precipitated by his own weight and lying with broken legs. Then, after he had been carried to Brunda, worn out by his shame and sufferings, he again hurled himself down from the highest ridge of the roof.”[1845] Cyril of Jerusalem, 315-386 A. D., also speaks of Simon’s being borne in air in the chariot of demons, “and is not surprised that the combined prayers of Peter and Paul brought him down, since in addition to Jesus’s promise to answer the petition of two or three gathered together it is to be remembered that Peter carried the keys of heaven and that Paul had been rapt to the third heaven and heard secret words.”[1846] Philastrius, another writer of the fourth century, describes Simon’s death more vaguely, stating that after Peter had driven him from Jerusalem he came to Rome where they engaged in another contest before Nero. Simon was worsted by Peter on every point of argument, and, “smitten by an angel died a merited death in order that the falsity of his magic might be evident to all men.”[1847] But it is hardly worth while to pile up such brief allusions to Simon in the writings of the fathers.[1848]
[Sidenote: Apocryphal Acts of Peter and Paul.]
Other fuller accounts of Simon’s doings at Rome are contained in the Syriac Teaching of Simon Cephas[1849] and in the apocryphal Acts of Peter and Paul.[1850] In the former Peter urges the people of Rome not to allow the sorcerer Simon to delude them by semblances which are not realities, and he raises a dead man to life after Simon has failed to do so. In the latter work Simon opposes Peter and Paul in the presence of Nero and as usual they charge one another with being magicians. Simon also as usual affirms that he is Christ, and we are told that the chief priests had called Jesus a wizard. Simon had already made a great impression upon Nero by causing brazen serpents to move and stone statues to laugh, and by altering both his face and stature and changing first to a child and then to an old man. Nero also asserts that Simon has raised a dead man and that Simon himself rose on the third day after being beheaded. It is later explained, however, that Simon had arranged to have the beheading take place in a dark corner and through his magic had substituted a ram for himself. The ram appeared to be Simon until after it had been decapitated, when the executioner discovered that the head was that of a ram but did not dare report the fact to Nero. When Simon met the apostles in Nero’s presence, he caused great dogs to rush suddenly at Peter, but Peter made them vanish into air by showing them some bread which he had been secretly blessing and breaking. As a final test Simon promised to ascend to heaven if Nero would build him a tower in the Campus Martius, where “my angels may find me in the air, for they cannot come to me upon earth among sinners.” The tower was duly provided, and Simon, crowned with laurel, began to fly successfully until Peter, tearfully entreated by Paul to make haste, adjured the angels of Satan who were supporting Simon to let him drop. Simon then fell upon the Sacra Via and his body was broken into four parts.[1851] Nero, however, chose to regard the apostles as Simon’s murderers and put them to death, after which a Marcellus, who had been Simon’s disciple but left him to join Peter, secretly buried Peter’s body.
[Sidenote: An account ascribed to Marcellus.]
To this Marcellus is ascribed a very similar narrative which is found in an early medieval manuscript and was perhaps written in the seventh or eighth century.[1852] Fabricius and Florentinus give its title as, Of the marvelous deeds and acts of the blessed Peter and Paul and of Simon’s magic arts.[1853] I have read it in a Latin pamphlet printed at some time before 1500, where the full title runs: The Passion of the Apostles Peter and Paul, and their disputation before the emperor Nero against Simon, a certain magician, who, when he saw that he could not resist the utterances of St. Peter, cast all his books of magic into the sea lest he be adjudged a magician. Then when the same Simon Magus presumed to ascend to heaven, overcome by St. Peter he fell to earth and perished most miserably. At its close occurs the statement, “I, Marcellus, a disciple of my lord, the apostle Peter, have written what I saw.” When this Marcellus began to desert his former master, Simon, to follow Peter, Simon procured a big dog to keep Peter away from Marcellus, but at Peter’s order the dog turned upon Simon himself. Peter then humanely forbade the beast to do Simon any serious bodily injury, but the dog tore the magician’s clothing off his back, and Simon was chased from town by the mob and did not venture to return until after a year’s time.[1854]
[Sidenote: Hegesippus.]
A chapter is devoted to Simon Magus in the History of the Jewish War of the so-called Hegesippus, a name which is thought to be a corruption of Josephus, since the work in large measure reproduces that historian. At any rate it was not written until the fourth century and is probably a translation or adaptation by Ambrose. Its account of Simon Magus combines the story of his competition with Peter in raising the dead, “for in such works Peter was held most celebrated,” with that of his flight and fall. He is represented as launching his flight from the Capitoline Hill and leaping off the Tarpeian rock. The people marveled at his flight, some remarking that Christ had never performed such a feat as this. But when Peter prayed against him, “straightway his propeller was tangled up in Peter’s voice, and he fell, nor was he killed, but, weakened by a broken leg, withdrew to Aricia and died there.”[1855]
[Sidenote: A sermon on Simon’s fall.]
Finally, passing over other Latin accounts of the contest between the apostles and Simon Magus to be found in the Apostolic Histories of the Pseudo-Abdias[1856] and in a work ascribed to Pope Linus,[1857] we may note a sermon which has been variously ascribed in the manuscripts and printed editions to Augustine, Ambrose, and Maximus.[1858] This sermon, intended for the anniversary of the day of martyrdom of Peter and Paul, proceeds to inquire the cause of their death and finds it in the fact that among other marvels they “prostrated by their prayers that magician Simon in a headlong fall from the empty air. For when the same Simon called himself Christ and asserted that as the Son he could ascend unto the Father by flying, and, suddenly raised up by magic arts, began to fly, then Peter on his knees prayed the Lord, and by sacred prayer overcame the magical levitation. For the prayer ascended to the Lord before the flier, and the just petition arrived ere the iniquitous presumption. Peter, I say, though placed on the ground, obtained what he sought before Simon reached the heaven towards which he was tending. So then Peter brought him down like a captive from high in air, and, falling precipitately upon a rock, he broke his legs. And this in contumely of his feat, so that he who just before had tried to fly, of a sudden could not even walk, and he who had assumed wings lost even his feet. But lest it appear strange that, while the apostle was present, that magician should fly through the air even for a while, let it be explained that this was due to Peter’s patience. For he let him soar the higher in order that he might fall the farther; for he wished him to be carried aloft where everyone could see him, in order that all might see him when he fell from on high.” The preacher then draws the moral that pride goes before a fall.
[Sidenote: Simon Magus in medieval art.]
The struggle of Peter and Paul with Simon Magus at Rome appears in The Golden Legend, compiled by Jacopo de Voragine in the thirteenth century, and was likewise a favorite theme of Gothic stained glass. At Chartres and Angers Peter may be seen routing Simon’s dogs by blessing bread; at Bourges and Lyons Simon and Peter compete in raising the dead; while windows at Chartres, Bourges, Tours, Reims, and Poitiers show the apostles praying and Simon falling and breaking his neck.[1859] This last scene and also the disputation before Nero are represented in the earlier mosaics of the eleventh or twelfth century which the Norman rulers of Sicily had executed in the cathedral of Monreale and the royal chapel of their castle at Palermo.[1860]
XVIII. THE CONFESSION OF CYPRIAN AND SOME SIMILAR STORIES
The Confession of Cyprian—His initiation into mysteries—His thorough study of nature, divination, and magic—The lore of Egypt—And of Chaldea—Cyprian’s practice of magic at Antioch—A Christian virgin defeats the magic of the demons—Summary of Cyprian’s picture of magic—Christians accused of magic—A story from Epiphanius—Joseph’s experience of miracle and magic—Legend of St. James and Hermogenes the magician—Other contests of apostles and magicians in The Golden Legend.
[Sidenote: The Confession of Cyprian.]
To the accounts of the contests of Peter and Paul with Simon Magus which were recorded in our last chapter we shall add in this some other encounters of early Christians with magicians, and to the picture of magic contained in the Pseudo-Clementines that presented by Cyprian in his Confession. If Simon Magus died impenitent in the midst of his magic, very different was the end of Cyprian, a magician by profession in the third century, who, after being educated from childhood in heathen mysteries and the magic art, repented and was baptized, became bishop of Antioch, and finally achieved a martyr’s crown. In the Confession[1861] current under his name and which most critics agree was composed before the time of Constantine[1862] is described his education in and subsequent practice of magic. For us perhaps the most interesting feature of his account of his education is the association of magic, not only with pagan mysteries and the operations of demons, but also with natural science.
[Sidenote: His initiation into mysteries.]
“I am Cyprian,” says the author, “who from a tender age was consecrated a gift to Apollo and while yet a child was initiated into the arts of the dragon.” When not yet seven years old, he entered the mysteries of Mithra, and at ten his parents enrolled him a citizen at Athens, and he carried a torch in the mysteries of Demeter and “ministered to the dragon on the citadel of Pallas.” When not yet fifteen, he also visited Mount Olympus for forty days, and “was initiated into sonorous speeches and noisy narrations.”[1863] There he saw in phantasy trees and herbs which seemed to be moved by the presence of the gods, spirits who regulated the passage of time, and choruses of demons who sang, while others waged war or plotted, deceived, and permeated.[1864] He saw the phalanx of each god and goddess, and how from Mount Olympus as from a palace spirits were despatched to every nation of the earth. He was fed only after sunset and upon fruits, and was taught the efficacy of each of them by seven hierophants.
[Sidenote: His thorough study of nature, divination, and magic.]
Cyprian’s parents were determined that he should learn whatever there was in earth and air and sea, and not merely the natural generation and corruption of herbs and trees and bodies, but also the virtues implanted in all these, which the prince of this world impressed upon them in order that he might oppose the divine constitution. Cyprian also participated at Argos in the sacred rites of Hera, and saw the union of air with ether and of ether with air, also of earth with water, and water with air. He penetrated the Troad and to Artemis Tauropolos who is at Lacedaemon to learn how matter was confused and divided “and the profundities of sinister and cruel legends.” From the Phrygians he learned liver divination; among the barbarians he studied auspices and the significance of the movements of quadrupeds, and how to interpret omens and the language of birds, and the sounds made by every kind of wood and stone, or by the dead in tombs and the creaking of doors. He became acquainted with the palpitations of the limbs, the movement of the blood and pulse in bodies, all the extensions and corollaries of ratios and numbers, diseases simulated as well as natural, “and oaths which are heard yet are not audible, and pacts for discord.” There was, in fine, nothing whatever in earth or sea or air that he did not know, whether it was a matter of science or phantasy, of mechanics or artifice, “even down to the magic translation of writings and other things of that sort.”
[Sidenote: The lore of Egypt.]
At twenty Cyprian was admitted to the shrines at ancient Memphis in Egypt and learned what communication and relationship existed between demons and earthly things and “in what stars and laws and objects they delight.” He witnessed imitations of earthquakes, rain, and storms at sea. He saw the souls of giants held in darkness and fancied that they sustained the earth as a load on their shoulders. He saw the communications of serpents with demons, ideas of transfigurations, impious piety, science without reason, iniquitous justice, and things topsy-turvy generally. Besides the forms of various sins and vices, such as fornication and avarice, which suggest the medieval personification of the seven deadly sins, he saw the three hundred and sixty-five varieties of ailments, “and the empty glory and the empty virtue” with which the priests of Egypt had deceived the Greek philosophers.
[Sidenote: And of Chaldea.]
At thirty Cyprian left Egypt for Chaldea in order to acquire its lore concerning air, fire, and light. Here he was instructed in the qualities of stars as well as of herbs, and their “choruses like drawn-up battle lines.” He was taught the house and relationships of each star and its appropriate food and drink. Also the meetings of spirits with men in light, the three hundred and sixty-five demons who divide as many parts of the ether between them, and the sacrifices, libations, and words appropriate to each. Cyprian’s education had now advanced to such a point that the devil himself hailed him, mere youth as he was, as a new Jambres, a skilful and reliable practitioner, and worthy of communication with himself. Cyprian again explains at this point that in all the stars and plants and other works of God the devil has bound to himself likenesses in preparation to wage war with God and His angels, but these likenesses are shadowy images, not solid substances. The devil’s rain is not water, his fire does not burn, his fish are not food, and his gold is not genuine. The devil obtains the material for his products from the vapors of sacrifices.
[Sidenote: Cyprian’s practice of magic at Antioch.]
Cyprian now returned from Chaldea and wrought marvels at Antioch “like one of the ancients,” and “made many experiments of magic and became celebrated as a magician and philosopher endowed with vast knowledge of things invisible.” Men came to him to be taught magic or to secure their ends by his assistance. And he easily helped them all, some to the gratification of pleasure, others to triumph over their adversaries or even to slay their rivals. His conscience sometimes pricked him at the evil deeds which he thus wrought with the aid of demons, but as yet he did not doubt that the devil was all powerful.
[Sidenote: A Christian virgin defeats the magic of the demons.]
But then the case of the Christian girl Justina revealed to him the weakness and fraud of the devil. Determined to dedicate herself to a life of virginity, Justina repulsed the love of the youth Aglaïdes, who sought Cyprian’s assistance. But in vain: the demon failed to alter Justina’s determination and was not even able to give another girl the form of Justina and so deceive Aglaïdes. Justina was shown the form of her lover, but she called upon the Virgin, and the devil was forced to vanish in smoke. Nor did disease and other plagues and torments affect her resolution. Her parents, however, were similarly afflicted until they besought her to marry Aglaïdes, but instead she cured them of their ailments by the sign of the cross. The devil then inflicted a plague on the entire community and delivered an oracle to the effect that the pest could be stayed only by the marriage of Justina and Aglaïdes, but her prayers turned the wrath of the public from herself against Cyprian. When the magician in disgust cursed the demon for the evil pass to which he had thus brought him, the demon made a ferocious attack upon him, from which Cyprian saved himself just in the nick of time by calling upon God for aid and making the sign of the cross. He then publicly confessed his crimes as a magician, burned his books of magic, and was baptized into the Christian faith.[1865]
[Sidenote: Summary of Cyprian’s picture of magic.]
Cyprian’s Confession thus represents magic as a very elaborate art, requiring long study and a thorough knowledge of natural objects and processes. The magician has his books, and he must also be able to read the book of nature. Astrology and other arts of divination are integral parts of magic. But magic is also represented as the work of evil spirits. This involves not merely a Neo-Platonic sort of association of demons with natural forces and regions of earth or sky, but also the specific association of the devil for evil purposes with objects in nature, a doctrine which we shall find again in the works of a medieval saint, Hildegard of Bingen. Furthermore, magic aids in the commission of crime and is dangerous even to the magician against whom the devil may turn. While magic involves study of nature and use of natural forces and associations, and we also hear of “many experiments of magic,” it is scarcely represented as operating scientifically in the Confession. It is mystic, confused, shadowy, imitative, imaginary, lacking in solidity and reality, fraudulent and deceptive. Finally, this complex art, this universal system of knowledge, is easily balked and overthrown by the far simpler counter-magic of Christianity, by such methods as a prayer to the Virgin, calling on the name of God, or merely making the sign of the cross.
[Sidenote: Christians accused of magic.]
Such counter-magic was apt to be regarded as magic by the pagans, and the account of the martyrdom of Cyprian states that the devil, that “very bad serpent,” suggested to the Count of the Orient that Cyprian, together with a certain virgin who is assumed to be Justina, was destroying the ancient worship of the gods by his magic tricks as well as stirring up the orient and the whole world by his epistles. He was accordingly arrested and finally beheaded. According to one account he and Justina were first placed together in a cauldron of tallow and pitch over a fire. But when they sang a hymn, the flames left them uninjured and instead shot out and caused the death of an unreformed magician who happened to be standing near by.[1866] Another case of Christian martyrs who were probably accused of magic is found in Spain about 287 A. D. Two Christian sisters who were dealers in pottery refused to sell their earthenware for purposes of pagan worship. One day, as a pagan religious procession passed by their shop, the crowd trampled upon their wares which were exposed for sale. But thereupon the idol which was being borne in the procession fell and broke in pieces. “Being probably suspected of magical practices,” the two sisters were arrested; one died in prison and the other was strangled; whereupon the bishop rescued their bones, and these were cherished as the remains of martyrs.[1867]
[Sidenote: A story from Epiphanius.]
Epiphanius in the next century tells a story similar to that of Cyprian, Aglaïdes, and Justina, of a youth who was led astray by evil companions who employed magic arts, love philters, and incantations to force free women to gratify their licentious desires. By means of magic the youth went through the air to a very beautiful woman in the public bath, but she repelled him by making the sign of the cross. His companions then tried to devise some more powerful magic for his benefit, and took him at sunset to a cemetery full of caves where for three successive nights the wizards vainly plied their arts in the attempt to gratify his lust. But in every instance they were foiled by the name of Christ and the sign of the cross.[1868]
[Sidenote: Joseph’s experience of miracle and magic.]
Joseph, the guardian of this same young man, finally became converted to Christianity after Christ had appeared repeatedly to him in dreams and cured him of diseases and after he himself, by employing the name of Jesus, had cured a man of a demoniacal possession which made him go shamelessly about the town in a nude state. After his conversion, Joseph started to complete as a Christian church an unfinished structure in Tiberias called the Adrianaion, which the citizens previously had tried to convert into a public bath. When the Jews endeavored to ruin his undertaking by bewitching the furnaces which he had erected for the preparation of quick-lime, he counteracted their magic by making the sign of the cross, sprinkling his furnaces with holy water, and saying in the name of Jesus of Nazareth, “Let there be power in this water to counteract all pharmacy and magic employed by these men and to instill sufficient energy into the fire to complete the house of the Lord.” With that his fires blazed up violently.[1869]
[Sidenote: Legend of St. James and Hermogenes the magician.]
Very similar both to the Confession of Cyprian and the story of Simon Magus is the legend of St. James the Great and Hermogenes the magician, which is found in The Golden Legend and which was often reproduced in medieval stained glass windows.[1870] James converted to Christianity a disciple of Hermogenes whom the magician had sent against him when he was preaching in Judea. When the angry wizard cast a spell over his erstwhile disciple, the latter was freed by means of St. James’s cloak. When the magician sent demons to fetch both the convert and the saint, James made them bring Hermogenes to him instead, but then set him free, telling him that Christians returned good for evil. Hermogenes now feared the vengeance that the demons would take upon himself, and so James gave his staff to him to protect himself with. Soon afterwards Hermogenes threw all his books of magic into the sea and was baptized.
[Sidenote: Other contests of apostles and magicians in The Golden Legend.]
“In The Golden Legend,” in fact, as Mâle says, “almost all the apostles have to contend with magicians. But it is St. Simon and St. Jude who strive with the most formidable of sorcerers, and they challenge him even in the very sanctuary of magic art, the temple of the Sun at Suanir, near Babylon. Undismayed by the science of Zoroaster and Aphaxad, they foretell the future, they cause a new-born babe to speak, they subdue tigers and serpents, and from a statue they cast out a demon, which shows itself in the shape of a black Ethiopian and flees uttering raucous cries.”[1871] If this last exorcism reminds us somewhat of the exploits of Apollonius of Tyana, still more do the performances of St. Andrew, who “must surpass all the marvels of the magicians before he can convert Asia and Greece. He drives away seven demons who in the shape of seven great dogs desolate the town of Nicaea, and he exorcises a spirit which dwells in the thermae and is wont to strangle the bathers.”[1872]
XIX. ORIGEN AND CELSUS
Celsus’ charges of magic against Christianity—Hebrew magic as depicted by Celsus—Various recriminations of magic—Origen’s distinction between miracles and magic—Origen frees Jews as well as Christians from the charge of magic—Celsus’ sceptical description of magic—Celsus suggests a connection between magic and occult virtues in nature—Celsus on magicians and demons—Origen ascribes magic to demons—Magic is an elaborate art—The Magi of Scripture were not different from other magicians—Origen’s Biblical commentaries—Balaam and the power of words—Limitations to the power of Pharaoh’s magicians—Was Balaam a prophet of God or a magician?—Balaam’s magic experiments—Limitations to his magic power—Divine prophecy distinct from magic and divination—The ventriloquist really invoked Samuel for Saul—Christians less affected by magic than philosophers are—Their superstitious methods against magic—Incantations—The power of words—Origen admits a connection between the power of words and magic—Jewish and Christian employment of powerful names is really magic—Celsus’ theory of demons—Origen calls demons wicked—But believes in presiding angels—A law of spiritual gravitation—Attitude of Celsus toward astrology—Attitude of Origen toward astrology—Further discussion in his Commentary on Genesis—Problems of the waters above the firmament and of one or more heavens—Augury, dreams, and prophecy—Animals and gems—Origen later accused of countenancing magic.
[Sidenote: Celsus’ charges of magic against Christianity.]
In the celebrated work of Origen Against Celsus,[1873] written in the first half of the third century, the subject of magic is often touched upon, largely because Celsus in his True Discourse had so frequently brought charges of magic against Jesus, His Christian followers, and the Jewish people from whom they had sprung. Celsus had called Jesus “a wicked and God-hated sorcerer”;[1874] had contended that His miracles were wrought by magic, not by divine power;[1875] and had compared them unfavorably, as less wonderful, to the tricks performed by jugglers and Egyptians in the middle of market-places.[1876] It was the opinion of Celsus that Jesus in warning His disciples that “there shall arise false Christs and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders,” had tacitly convicted Himself of the same magical practices.[1877] Celsus, for his part, warned the Christians that they “must shun all deceivers and jugglers who will introduce you to phantoms”;[1878] he accused them of employing incantations and the names of certain demons;[1879] he asserted that he had seen in the hands of Christian presbyters “barbarous books containing the names and marvelous operations of demons,” and that these presbyters “professed to do no good, but all that was calculated to injure human beings.”[1880]
[Sidenote: Hebrew magic as depicted by Celsus]
Celsus regarded Moses equally with Jesus as a wizard,[1881] and he evidently, like Juvenal and other classical writers, considered the Jews and Syrians as a race of charlatans, especially given to superstition, sorcery, incantations, ambiguous oracles and conjuration of spirits. “They worship angels,” he declared, “and are addicted to sorcery, in which Moses was their instructor.”[1882] He stated that the Jews traced back their origin to “the first generation of lying wizards,” by which phrase Origen thinks he referred to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, whose names Origen admits are much employed in the magic arts.[1883] Celsus further characterized the Jews as “blinded by some crooked sorcery, or dreaming dreams through the influence of shadowy specters,”[1884] and as “induced to bow down to the angels in heaven by the incantations employed by jugglery and sorcery, in consequence of which certain phantoms appear in obedience to the spells employed by the magicians.”[1885] Celsus, also, in describing the many self-styled prophets, Redeemers, and Sons of God in the Phoenicia and Palestine of his own time, states that they make use of “strange, fanatical, and quite unintelligible words, of which no rational person can find any meaning,”[1886] and that those prophets whom he himself had heard had afterwards confessed to him that these words “really meant nothing.”[1887] Yet even the Christians—Celsus complains—who condemn all other oracles, regard as marvelous and accept unquestioningly “those sayings which were uttered or were not uttered in Judea after the manner of that country, as indeed they are still delivered among the peoples of Phoenicia and Palestine.”[1888]
[Sidenote: Various recriminations of magic.]
To these accusations of Celsus Origen himself adds that the Jews affirm that Jesus passed Himself off as Christ by means of sorcery,[1889] while the Egyptians charge Moses and the Hebrews with the practice of sorcery during their stay in Egypt.[1890] Origen, on the other hand, speaks of “the magical arts and rites of the Egyptians” and holds that it was by divine aid and not by superior magic that Moses prevailed over Pharaoh’s magicians.[1891] Celsus for his part had accused Jesus during His residence in Egypt of “having there acquired some miraculous powers, on which the Egyptians greatly pride themselves.”[1892]
[Sidenote: Origen’s distinction between miracles and magic.]
Origen repudiates the charges of magic made against Christ and His followers as slanders. He asserts that Christianity on the contrary strictly forbids the practice of magic arts,[1893] and that these lost much of their force at the birth of Christ.[1894] He contends that no magician would teach such noble doctrines as those of Christianity.[1895] Origen goes so far as to deny that even the “false Christs and false prophets,” who “shall show great signs and wonders,” will be sorcerers, and he states that no sorcerer has ever claimed to be Christ[1896]—an amazing assertion in view of his own allusions to Simon Magus. Works of magic and miracles, Origen affirms, are no more alike than are a wolf and a dog or a wood-pigeon and a dove. They are, however, so closely related that if one admits the reality of magic he must also believe in divine miracles, just as the existence of sophistry proves that there is such a thing as sound argument and an art of dialectic.[1897] Moreover, in one passage Origen admits that “there would indeed be a resemblance” between miracles and magic, “if Jesus, like the dealers in magic arts, had performed His works only for show; but now there is not a single juggler who, by means of his proceedings, invites his spectators to reform their manners, or trains those to the fear of God who are amazed at what they see, nor who tries to persuade them so to live as men who are to be justified by God.”[1898] On the contrary, Origen asserts that the magicians’ “own lives are full of the grossest and most notorious sins.”
[Sidenote: Origen frees Jews as well as Christians from the charge of magic.]
Since it is one of Origen’s chief concerns to uphold Hebrew prophecy as a proof of Christ’s divinity, although Celsus subjects the argument from prophecy to ridicule; to defend the Old Testament against Celsus’ attacks as an inspired record of greater antiquity than Greek philosophy, history, and literature, which he asserts have stolen truths from it; and to maintain that “there is no discrepancy between the God of the Gospel and the God of the Law”:[1899]—since this is so, it is incumbent upon him to rebut also the accusations of magic laid by Celsus at the door of the Jews. Origen therefore asserts that the Jews “despised all kinds of divination as that which bewitches men to no purpose,” and cites the prohibition of Leviticus (xix, 31) against wizards and familiar spirits.[1900]
[Sidenote: Celsus’ sceptical description of magic.]
The Reply to Celsus is of especial interest to us because it presents as it were in parallel columns for our inspection the classical and the Christian conceptions of and attitudes towards magic. Before proceeding, therefore, to inquire how far justified Origen seems to be in thus acquitting, or Celsus, on the other hand, in condemning Christians and Jews on the charge of magic, it is essential to note what magic means for either author. Both evidently regard it as a term of reproach and as usually evil in character.[1901] Celsus lists as feats of magic the expelling of demons and diseases from men, or the sudden production of tables, dishes, and food as for an expensive banquet, or of animals who move about as if alive. Celsus, however, seems to speak with a sneer of “their most venerated arts” and describes the banquet dishes as “dainties having no real existence” and the animals as “not really living but having only the appearance of life.” Therefore the ensuing comment of Origen seems unusually stupid or unfair, when he tries to convict Celsus of inconsistency on the ground that “by these expressions he allows as it were the existence of magic,” whereas Origen hints that it was he “who wrote several books against it.” “These expressions” are, on the contrary, precisely those which a man who had attacked magic as deceptive would use. Celsus further stated that an Egyptian named Dionysius had told him that magic arts had power “only over the uneducated and men of corrupt morals,” but had no effect upon philosophers, “because they were careful to observe a healthy manner of life.”[1902] Celsus himself observed that “those who in market-places perform most disreputable tricks and collect crowds around them ... would never approach an assembly of wise men.”[1903] It was at the request of a Celsus, moreover, that the second century satirist Lucian wrote his Alexander or Pseudomantis[1904] in which some of the tricks of a magician-impostor and oracle-monger are exposed, and in which allusion is made to the “excellent treatises against the magicians” written by Celsus himself. It seems reasonably certain that the Celsus of Lucian and the Celsus of Origen are identical, as there are no chronological difficulties and the same point of view is ascribed in either case to Celsus, whom both Lucian and Origen regard as an Epicurean or at least in sympathy with the Epicureans. Galen, in a treatise in which he lists his own writings, mentions an “Epistle to Celsus the Epicurean.”[1905] This, too, might be the same man.
[Sidenote: Celsus suggests a connection between magic and occult virtues in nature.]
Another passage in which Celsus, according to Origen at least, “mixed up together matters which belong to magic and sorcery” runs as follows: “What need to number up all those who have taught methods of purification, or expiatory hymns, or spells for averting evil, or images, or resemblances of demons, or the various sorts of antidotes against poison in clothing, or in numbers, or stones, or plants, or roots, or generally in all kinds of things?”[1906] In another passage Celsus again closely connected sorcery with the knowledge of occult virtues in nature, arguing that men need not pride themselves upon their power of sorcery when serpents and eagles know of antidotes to poisons and amulets and the virtues of certain stones which help to preserve their young.[1907] Origen objects that it is not customary to use the word sorcery (γοητεία) for such things, and suggests that Celsus is such an “Epicurean,” i. e., so sceptical, that he wishes to discredit all those other beliefs and practices “as resting only on the professions of sorcerers.” But we have already had proof enough in other chapters that Celsus was not unjustified in connecting the occult virtue of natural objects with magic, if not with sorcery.
[Sidenote: Celsus on magicians and demons.]
Celsus, as we shall see, believed in the existence of demons whom, however, he did not regard as necessarily evil spirits, and whom he probably regarded as above any connection with magic. Origen once says that if Celsus “had been acquainted with the nature of demons” and their operations in the magic arts, he would not have blamed Christians for not worshiping them.[1908] The natural inference from this statement is that Celsus did not associate demons with magic. Origen, however, depicts him as “speaking of those who employ the arts of magic and sorcery and who invoke the barbarous names of demons,”[1909] and we have already heard him censure certain Christian presbyters for their “barbarous books containing the names and marvelous doings of demons.”[1910] It therefore becomes evident that magicians attempt to avail themselves of the aid of demons, whether Celsus believes that they succeed in their attempt or not.
[Sidenote: Origen ascribes magic to demons.]
Origen at any rate believes that magicians are aided by evil spirits, and for him demons became the paramount factor in magic, just as it is they who are worshiped in pagan temples as gods and who inspire the pagan oracles.[1911] Indeed, just as Celsus has kept calling the Christians sorcerers, so Origen is inclined to label all heathen religions, rites, and ceremonies as magic. He quotes the Psalmist as saying that “all the gods of the heathen are demons.”[1912] He states that the dedication of pagan temples, statues, and the like are accompanied by “curious magical incantations ... performed by those who zealously serve the demons with magic arts.”[1913] Divination in general, he believes, “proceeds rather from wicked demons than from anything of a better nature.”[1914] He does not think of magic as a deception, he does not endeavor to expose its frauds, he accepts its marvels as facts, but declares that “magic and sorcery are produced by wicked spirits, held spellbound by elaborate incantations and yielding themselves to sorcerers.”[1915] Origen seems in doubt whether the demons are coerced by the spells and charms of magic or yield themselves willingly.[1916]
[Sidenote: Magic is an elaborate art.]
As we shall see, Origen is at least ready to attribute great power to incantations, and he does not deny that magic is an elaborate art. With such various arts of magic he contrasts the simplicity of Christian prayers and adjurations “which the plainest person can use,” or the Christian casting out of demons which is performed for the most part by “unlettered persons.”[1917] Origen also suggests that the natural properties of plants and animals are a factor in magic, when he cites Numenius the Pythagorean’s description of the Egyptian deity Serapis. “He partakes of the essence of all the animals and plants that are under the control of nature, that he may appear to have been fashioned into a god, not only by the image-makers with the aid of profane mysteries and juggling tricks employed to invoke demons, but also by magicians and sorcerers (μάγων καὶ φαρμακῶν) and those demons who are bewitched by their incantations.”[1918] Another passage pointing in the same direction is Origen’s description of “the man who is curiously inquisitive about the names of demons, their powers and agency, the incantations, the herbs proper to them, and the stones with the inscriptions graven on them, corresponding symbolically or otherwise to their traditional shapes.”[1919] Thus although Origen lays the emphasis upon demons, we see that he admits most of the other customary elements in magic.
[Sidenote: The Magi of Scripture were not different from other magicians.]
Origen does not, like Philo Judaeus, Apuleius and some Christian writers, distinguish two uses of the word magic, one good and one evil. He does not differentiate between vulgar magic and malignant sorcery on the one hand and the lore of learned Magi of the east on the other hand. He simply says that the art of magic gets its name from the Magi and that from them its evil influence has been transmitted to other nations.[1920] Celsus had ranked the Magi among divinely inspired nations but Origen objects to this. Yet he recognizes that the wise men of the east who followed the star of Bethlehem and came to worship the infant Christ were Magi.[1921] But he seems to regard them as ordinary magicians, who were accustomed to invoke evil spirits.[1922] He thinks that the coming of Christ dispelled the demons and hindered the Magi’s spells and charms from working as usual. Trying to find the reason for this, they would note the new star in the sky. Origen will not admit that they could do all this by means of astrology, nor even that they were astrologers at all; he accuses Celsus of blundering in calling them Chaldeans or astrologers.[1923] Rather he thinks that they could find an explanation of the star in the prophecies of Balaam[1924] which they possessed and which predicted, as Moses too records,[1925] “There shall arise a star out of Jacob, and a man (or, as in the King James’ version, a scepter) shall rise up out of Israel.”[1926] In another treatise than the Reply to Celsus Origen further explains that the Magi were descended from Balaam and so owned his written prophecies.[1927] Balaam was perhaps alluding to these very Magi descended from him who came to adore Jesus when he prophesied that his seed should be as the seed of the just.[1928] Origen seems to have been the first of the church fathers to state the number of these Magi as three, which he does in one of his homilies on the Book of Genesis.[1929]
[Sidenote: Origen’s Biblical commentaries.]
At this point indeed, we may well turn for a little while from the Reply to Celsus to those Biblical commentaries of Origen where he discusses such Old Testament passages connected with magic as the stories of Balaam and of the witch of Endor or ventriloquist. The commentary of Origen upon the Book of Numbers is extant only in the Latin translation by Rufinus, who literally snatched it for posterity as a brand from the burning, for he did not refrain from this learned and literary labor, although as he plied his pen in Messina in 410 A. D. he could see the invading barbarians ravaging the fields and burning Reggio just across the narrow strait which separates Sicily from Italy.[1930]
[Sidenote: Balaam and the power of words.]
In commencing to speak of Balaam and his ass[1931] Origen implies that much has already been written on this thorny theme and that he approaches it with considerable diffidence. He prays God again and again for grace to be able to explain it, not by means of fabulous Jewish narrations—by which expression he perhaps alludes to commentaries of the rabbis such as have reached us in the Talmud—but in a sense that shall be reasonable and worthy of the divine law. To begin with he admits the power of words, and not merely that of holy words or words of God, but of certain words used by men. That such words are in some respects more powerful than bodies is shown by the fact that Balaam’s cursing could accomplish what armies and weapons could not effect. This calls to mind one of the Mohammedan tales concerning Balaam to the effect that by reading the books of Abraham he learned “the name Yahweh by virtue of which he predicted the future, and got from God whatever he wished.”[1932]
[Sidenote: Limitations to the power of Pharaoh’s magicians.]
The magicians of Egypt, too, who withstood Moses and Aaron before Pharaoh, were able to turn rods into snakes and water into blood, feats which no man could accomplish by mere bodily strength. Indeed, because the king of Egypt knew that his magicians could do such things by a human art of words, he thought, at first at least, that Moses too was doing the same things not by the help of God but by the magic art. There was, however, a very serious limitation to the magicians’ power. By the aid of demons they could turn good into evil but they could not repair the damage which they had done or restore the evil to good. The rod of Moses, on the other hand, not only devoured theirs but turned back from a snake into its original form,[1933] and it was necessary for Moses to pray to God in order to stay the other plagues.
[Sidenote: Was Balaam a prophet of God or a magician?]
Origen classifies Balaam as a magician, not as a prophet. This seems to have been the prevalent patristic and medieval view, although the Biblical account in Numbers represents Balaam as in close and constant communication with God and the Second Epistle of Peter[1934] calls him a prophet although it condemns his temporary madness in seeking “the wages of unrighteousness.” Josephus too calls him the best prophet of his time but one who yielded to temptation.[1935] A fifteenth century treatise on the translation of the relics of the three kings to Cologne tells us that “concerning this Balaam there is an altercation in the east between the Christians and the Jews”; the Jews holding that he was no prophet but a diviner who predicted by magic and diabolical arts, the Christians asserting that he was the first prophet of the Gentiles.[1936] The problem continued to exercise the ingenuity of Lutherans and theologians of the Reformed Churches, and in 1842 was the main theme of a treatise of 290 pages in which Hebrew words and quotations from Calvin abound.[1937]
[Sidenote: Balaam’s magic experiments.]
Origen remarks that magicians differ in the amount of power they possess. Balaam was a very famous and expert one, known throughout the whole orient. He had given many experimental proofs (experimenta) of his skill and Balak had frequently employed him. The translator Rufinus’s repeated use of the words experimenta and expertus here is an interesting indication of the close connection between magic and experiment.[1938]
[Sidenote: Limitation to his magic power.]
Great, however, as was Balaam’s fame and power, he could only curse and not bless, an indication that he operated by the agency of demons who also only work evil and not good. It is true that King Balak said to him: “I know that whom you bless will be blessed,” but Origen regards this as false flattery. Magicians employ the services of evil spirits, but cannot invoke such angels as Michael, Raphael, and Gabriel, much less God or Christ. Christians alone have the power to do this, and they must cease entirely from the invocation of demons or the Holy Spirit will flee from them.
[Sidenote: Divine prophecy distinct from magic and divination.]
It is true also that God in the end did speak through the mouth of Balaam and that he blessed instead of cursed Israel. Origen will not admit, however, that Balaam was worthy of this, or that a man can be both a magician and a prophet; if God spake through Balaam, it was only to prevent the demons from coming and helping Balaam to curse Israel. Origen also attempts to solve the difficulties and inconsistencies involved in the repeated appearances and conflicting commands of God and the angel to Balaam. Finally we may note that Origen sees the similarity between the use of cauldron-shaped tripods in human arts of divination and the donning of the ephod by the prophets described in the Old Testament.[1939] But he affirms that divine prophecy and divination are two different things and cites the Biblical prohibition of the latter.
[Sidenote: The ventriloquist really invoked Samuel for Saul.]
In his commentary upon the First Book of Samuel,[1940] Origen takes the ground that when Saul consulted the witch or ventriloquist (ἐγγαστριμύθος), Samuel’s ghost really appeared and spoke to Saul, for the Scriptural account plainly says that the woman saw Samuel[1941] and that Samuel spoke to Saul. Consequently Origen cannot agree with those who have held that the woman deceived Saul or that both she and he were deluded by a demon who assumed the guise of Samuel. No demon, he thinks, could have prophesied that the kingdom would pass to David. It has been objected that the enchantress could not raise the spirit of Samuel from the infernal regions because he was a good man, but Origen holds that even Christ descended to hell and that all before Him had their abode there until He came to release them. From this position not even the parable of Dives and of Lazarus in Abraham’s bosom with the great gulf fixed between them can shake Origen.
[Sidenote: Christians less affected by magic than philosophers are.]
Origen disputes the statement of Celsus that philosophers are not affected by the magic arts by pointing out that in Moiragenes’s Life of Apollonius of Tyana, who was himself both a philosopher and magician, it is affirmed that other philosophers were won over by his magic power “and resorted to him as a sorcerer.”[1942] On the other hand Origen makes the counter-assertion that the followers of Christ “who live according to His gospel, using night and day continuously and becomingly the prescribed prayers, are not carried away either by magic or demons.”
[Sidenote: Their superstitious methods against magic.]
If these “prescribed prayers” were set forms of words, they would seem not far removed in character from the incantations of the magicians which they were supposed to counteract. An even clearer example of preventive magic is seen in Origen’s explanation that the practice of circumcision was a safeguard against some angel (sic) hostile to the Jewish race.[1943]
[Sidenote: Incantations.]
If demons are for Origen of primary importance in magic, incantations run a close second, since it is chiefly through them that men are able to utilize the power of the demons. Some of the barbarians, Origen tells us, “are admired for their marvelous powers of incantation.”[1944] And when he mentions the miraculous releases of Peter and Paul and Silas from prison, he adds that if Celsus had read of these events he “would probably say in reply that there are certain sorcerers who are able by incantations to unloose chains and to open doors.”[1945] But Celsus did not say this; we must therefore attribute the thought rather to Origen himself. Speaking elsewhere in his own person Origen more than once informs us that “almost all those who occupy themselves with incantations and magical rites” and “many who conjure evil spirits” employ in their spells and incantations such expressions as “God of Abraham.”[1946] Origen grants that these phrases are used by the Jews themselves in their prayers to God and exorcisms, and that the names of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob possess great efficacy “when united with the word of God.”[1947] Yet he will not acknowledge that the Jews practice magic. He also denies the charge of Celsus that Christians use incantations and the names of certain demons, although he admits that Christians ward off magic by regular use of prescribed prayers and frequently expel demons by repetition of “the simple name of Jesus, and certain other words in which they repose faith, according to the holy Scriptures,” or “the name of Jesus accompanied by the announcement of the narratives which relate to Him” (presumably a repetition of the names of the four Evangelists).[1948] It is even possible for persons who are not true Christians to make use of the name of Jesus to work wonders just as magicians use the Hebrew names.[1949]
[Sidenote: The power of words.]
Origen, however, does not try to justify these Hebrew and Christian formulae, adjurations, and exorcisms on the ground that they are simply prayers to God, who Himself then performs the cure or miracle without compulsion. Origen believes that there is power in the words themselves, as we have already heard him state in speaking of Balaam. This is seen from the fact that when translated into another language they lose their operative force, as those who are skilled in the use of incantations have noted.[1950] Thus not what is signified by the words, but the qualities and peculiarities of the words themselves, are potent for this or that effect. It seems strange that Origen should thus cite enchanters, when in the sentence just preceding he had spoken of “our Jesus, whose name has been manifestly seen to have driven out demons from souls and bodies....” Was the divine name alone and not God the cause of the miracle? It may be added, however, that Origen denied that languages were of human origin.[1951] But he has already gone far along this line and in the previous chapter has stated that “the nature of powerful names” is a “deep and mysterious subject.”[1952] Some such names, he goes on to say, “are used by the learned amongst the Egyptians, or by the Magi among the Persians, and by the Indian philosophers called Brahmans.”
[Sidenote: Origen admits a connection between the power of words and magic.]
Later on in the work, in a passage which we have already cited, Origen waxed indignant with Celsus for speaking favorably of the Magi, inventors of the destructive magic art. But now he speaks almost in a tone of respect of magic, stating that if “the so-called magic also is not, as followers of Epicurus” (i. e., men like Celsus whom Origen accuses of being an Epicurean) “and Aristotle think, an entirely chaotic affair but, as those skilled in such matters show, a connected system comprising words known to very few persons,” then such names as Adonai and Sabaoth “pertain to some mystic theology,” and, “when pronounced with that attendant train of circumstances which is appropriate to their nature, are possessed of great power.”
[Sidenote: Jewish and Christian employment of powerful names is really magic.]
These last clauses make it clear that Jews and Christians were guilty both of incantations and magic, however much Origen may protest to the contrary. It can hardly be argued that Origen means to distinguish this “so-called magic” from the magic art which he condemns in other passages, for not only is it evident that the followers of Epicurus and Aristotle make no such distinction, but Origen himself in other passages ascribes the employment of such Hebrew names to ordinary magicians and declares that such invocations of God are “found in treatises on magic in many countries.”[1953] Origen also states in his Commentary upon Matthew[1954] that the Jews are regarded as adepts in adjuration of demons and that they employ adjurations in the Hebrew language drawn from the books of Solomon. Moreover, he continues in the present passage, “And other names, again, current in the Egyptian tongue, are efficacious against certain demons who can only do certain things; and others in the Persian language have corresponding power over other spirits; and so on in every different nation, for different purposes.” “ ... And when one is able to philosophize about the mystery of names, he will find much to say respecting the titles of the angels of God, of whom one is called Michael, and another Gabriel, and another Raphael, appropriately to the duties which they discharge in the world. And a similar philosophy of names applies also to our Jesus.” Between such mystic theology and philosophy of names, the Gnostic diagram of the Ophites,[1955] and the downright incantations of the magicians, there is surely little to choose.
[Sidenote: Celsus’ theory of demons.]
From the names of God and angels, by uttering which such wonders may be performed, we turn to the spirits themselves. Celsus seems to think of demons as spiritual beings who act as intermediaries between the supreme Deity and the world of nature and human society. He believes that “in all probability the various quarters of the earth were from the beginning allotted to different superintending spirits.”[1956] He warns the Christians that it is absurd for them to think that they can escape the demons by simply refusing to eat the meat that has been offered to idols; the demons are everywhere in nature, and one cannot eat bread or drink wine or taste fruit or breathe the very air without receiving these gifts of nature from the demons to whom the various provinces of nature have been assigned.[1957] The Egyptians teach that even the most insignificant objects are committed to demon care, and they divide the human body into thirty-six parts, each in charge of a demon of the air who should be invoked in order to cure an ailment of that particular part.[1958] Celsus mentions some of the names of these thirty-six demons: Chnoumen, Chnachoumen, Cnat, Sicat, Biou, Erou, and others. Celsus, however, does not accept this Egyptian doctrine without qualification. He suspects, Origen tells us, that it leads toward magic, and hence adds “the opinion of those wise men who say that most of the earth-demons are taken up with carnal indulgence, blood, odors, sweet sounds and other such sensual things; and therefore they are unable to do more than heal the body, or foretell the fortunes of men and cities, and do other such things as relate to this mortal life.”[1959] Celsus himself, however, seems as unwilling to accept this Egyptian view as he is to condone magic, and concludes that “the more just opinion is that the demons desire nothing and need nothing, but that they take pleasure in those who discharge toward them offices of piety.”[1960] Celsus believes that divine providence regulates the acts of the demons and so asks: “Why are we not to serve demons?”[1961]
[Sidenote: Origen calls demons wicked.]
Origen’s reply to this question is that the demons are wicked spirits and concerned with magic and idolatry. He maintains that not only Christians “but almost all who acknowledge the existence of demons” regard them as evil spirits.[1962] His own attitude toward them is invariably one of hostility. The thirty-six spirits who, as the Egyptians believe, have charge of different parts of the human body, Origen spurns as “thirty-six barbarous demons whom the Egyptian Magi alone call upon in some unknown way.”[1963] Really we probably have here to do with the astrological decans or sub-divisions of the signs of the zodiac into sections of ten degrees each.
[Sidenote: But believes in presiding angels.]
Yet Origen’s notion of the spiritual world rather closely resembles that of Celsus, for he is ready to ascribe to angels or other good invisible beings much the same functions which Celsus attributed to demons. He does not, for example, dispute the theory that different parts of the earth and of nature are assigned to different spirits. Instead he “ventures to lay down some considerations of a profounder kind, conveying a mystical and secret view respecting the original distribution of the various quarters of the earth among different superintending spirits.”[1964] He quotes the Septuagint version of Deuteronomy, “When the most High divided the nations.... He set the bounds of the people according to the number of the angels of God.”[1965] He narrates how after Babel, men “were conducted by those angels who imprinted on each his native language to the different parts of the earth according to their deserts.”[1966] He concludes by saying, “These remarks are to be understood as being made by us with a concealed meaning,”[1967] but there seems little doubt as to his substantial agreement with the view of Celsus. Indeed, later when Celsus asserts that Christians cannot eat, drink, or breathe without being indebted to demons, Origen responds, “We indeed also maintain ... the agency and control of certain beings whom we may call invisible husbandmen and guardians; ... but we deny that those invisible agents are demons.”[1968]
In his fourteenth homily on Numbers, as extant in Rufinus’s translation,[1969] Origen again speaks of presiding angels in these words. “And what is so pleasant, what is so magnificent as the work of the sun or moon by whom the world is illuminated? Yet there is work in the world itself too for angels who are over beasts and for angels who preside over earthly armies. There is work for angels who preside over the nativity of animals, of seedlings, of plantations, and many other growths. And again there is work for angels who preside over holy works, who teach the comprehension of eternal light and the knowledge of God’s secrets and the science of divine things.” How this passage might be used to encourage a belief in magic is made evident by the paraphrase of it in The Occult Philosophy of Henry Cornelius Agrippa,[1970] written in 1510 at the close of the middle ages. He represents Origen as saying, “There is work in the world itself for angels who preside over earthly armies, kingdoms, provinces, men, beasts, the nativity and growth of animals, shoots, plants, and other things, giving that virtue which they say is in things from their occult property.”
In the treatise De Principiis,[1971] Origen states that particular offices are assigned to individual angels, as curing diseases to Raphael, and the conduct of wars to Gabriel. This notion he perhaps derived from the Book of Enoch which, however, he states in his Reply to Celsus is not accepted by the churches as divinely inspired.[1972] He further declares on the authority of passages in the New Testament that to one angel the Church of the Ephesians was entrusted; to another, that of Smyrna; that Peter had his angel and Paul his,—nay that “every one of the little ones of the Church” has his angel who daily beholds the face of God.[1973]
[Sidenote: A law of spiritual gravitation.]
Origen advances a further theory concerning spirits, which may be described as a sort of law of spiritual gravitation. It is that when souls are pure and “not weighted down with sin as with a weight of lead,” they ascend on high where other pure and ethereal bodies and spirits dwell, “leaving here below their grosser bodies along with their impurities.” Polluted souls, on the contrary, have to stay close to earth where they wander about sepulchers as ghosts and apparitions.[1974] Origen therefore infers that pagan gods “who are attached for entire ages to particular dwellings and places” on earth, are wicked and polluted spirits. Origen of course will not admit that Christians or Jews bow down even to angels; such worship they reserve for God alone.[1975]
[Sidenote: Attitude of Celsus toward astrology.]
Both Celsus and Origen closely associate with the world of invisible spirits, whether these be angels or demons, the visible heavenly bodies, and thus lead us from magic, which Origen makes so dependent upon demons, to the kindred subject of astrology, the pseudo-science of the stars. Celsus had censured the Jews and by implication the Christians for worshiping heaven and the angels, and even apparitions produced by sorcery and enchantment, and yet at the same time neglecting what in his opinion formed the holiest and most powerful part of the heaven, namely, the fixed stars and the planets, “who prophesy to everyone so distinctly, through whom all productiveness results, the most conspicuous of supernal heralds, real heavenly angels.”[1976] This shows that Celsus was much more favorably inclined toward astrology than toward magic and less sceptical concerning its validity. Origen also represents Celsus—and furthermore the Stoics, Platonists, and Pythagoreans—as believing in the theory of the magnus annus, according to which, when the celestial bodies all return to their original positions after the lapse of some thousands of years, history will begin to repeat itself and the same events will occur and the same persons live over again.[1977] Origen also complains that Celsus regards as a divinely-inspired nation the Chaldeans, who were the founders of “deceitful genethlialogy,”[1978] as well as the Magi whom Celsus elsewhere identified with the Chaldeans or astrologers, but whom Origen as we have seen regards rather as the founders of magic.
[Sidenote: Attitude of Origen toward astrology.]
Origen is opposed both to this art of casting horoscopes and determining the entire life of the individual from his nativity, and to the theory of the magnus annus,[1979] because he is convinced that to admit their truth is to annihilate free-will. But he is far from having freed himself fundamentally from the astrological attitude toward the stars; indeed he still shows vestiges of the old pagan tendency to worship them as divinities. He is convinced that the celestial bodies are not mere fiery masses, as Anaxagoras teaches.[1980] The body of a star is material, it is true, but also ethereal. But furthermore Origen is inclined to agree, both in the De principiis[1981] and in the Contra Celsum,[1982] that the stars are rational beings (λογικὰ καί σπουδαῖα—the latter word had already been applied to them by Philo Judaeus) possessed of free-will and “illuminated with the light of knowledge by that wisdom which is the reflection of everlasting light.” He interprets a passage in Deuteronomy[1983] to mean that the stars have in general been assigned by God to all the nations beneath the heaven, but asserts that from this system of astral satrapies God’s chosen people were exempted. He is willing to admit that the stars foretell many things, and puts especial faith in comets as omens.[1984] He states that they have appeared on the eve of dynastic changes, great wars, and other disasters, and inclines also to agree with Chaeremon the Stoic that they may come as signs of future good, as in the case of the star announcing the birth of Christ.[1985] But while Origen will grant reasoning faculties and a certain amount of prophetic power to the stars, he refuses to permit worship of them. Rather he is persuaded “that the sun himself and moon and stars pray to the supreme God through his only begotten Son.”[1986]
Pierre Daniel Huet (1630-1721), the learned bishop of Avranches and editor of Origen, in his commentaries upon Origen[1987] cites other works, commentaries on Matthew, the Psalms, the Epistle to the Romans, and Ezekiel, in which Origen again states that the stars are reasoning beings, honor God, praise and pray to Him, and even that they are capable of sin, a point upon which he agrees with the Book of Enoch and Bardesanes but not with Philo Judaeus. Nicephorus[1988] states that Origen was condemned in the fifth synod for his error concerning the stars being animated. Sometimes, however, Huet points out, Origen leaves it an open question whether the heavenly bodies are animated or not.[1989] Huet also asserts that in his own time such great men as Tycho Brahe and Kepler have defended the view that the stars are animated beings.
[Sidenote: Further discussion in his Commentary on Genesis.]
In a fragment from Origen’s Commentary on Genesis preserved by Eusebius we have a further discussion of the stars and astrology.[1990] Here he represents even Christians as troubled by the doctrine that the stars control human affairs absolutely. This theory he attacks as destructive to all morality, as rendering prayer to God of no avail, and as subjecting even such events as the birth of Christ and the conversion of each individual to Christianity to fatal necessity. Like Philo Judaeus Origen holds that the stars are merely signs instituted by God, not causes of the future, and quotes passages from the Old Testament in support of his view; like the Book of Enoch he holds that men were instructed in the interpretation of the stars’ significations by the fallen angels. He argues at length that divine foreknowledge does not impose necessity. While, however, God instituted the stars as signs of the future, He intended that only the angels should be able to read them, and deemed it best for mankind to remain in ignorance of the future. “For it is a much greater task than lies within human power to learn truly from the motion of the stars what each person will do and suffer.”[1991] The evil spirits have, however, taught men the art of astrology, but Origen believes that it is so difficult and requires such superhuman accuracy that the predictions of astrologers are more likely to be wrong than right. His tone toward astrology is thus distinctly more unfavorable here than in the Reply to Celsus. In arguing that the stars are merely signs, Origen asks why men admit that the flight of birds and condition of entrails in augury and liver-divination are only signs and yet insist that the stars are causes of future events.[1992] The answer, of course, is simple enough: all nature is under the control of the stars which alike produce the events signified and the action of the birds or condition of the liver signifying them. But the question is notable because it was also put by Plotinus a little later in the same century.
[Sidenote: Problems of the waters above the firmament and of one or more heavens.]
In explaining the Book of Genesis Origen said that celestial and infernal virtues were represented by the waters above and below the firmament respectively. This figurative interpretation gave offence to many later Christian writers, although some of them were ready to interpret the waters above as celestial virtues, but not to take the waters below as signifying evil spirits.[1993] Concerning the question of a plurality of heavens Origen says in the Reply to Celsus, “The Scriptures which are current in the Churches of God do not speak of seven heavens or of any definite number at all, but they do appear to teach the existence of heavens, whether that means the spheres of those bodies which the Greeks call planets or something more mysterious.”[1994]
[Sidenote: Augury, dreams, and prophecy.]
Of other pagan methods of divination than astrology Origen disapproved and classed them, as we have seen, as the work of demons. He was impressed by the weight of testimony to the validity of augury,[1995] although he states that it has been disputed whether there is any such art, but he attributed the truth of the predictions to demons acting through the animals and pointed out that the Mosaic law forbade augury[1996] and classified as unclean the animals commonly employed in divination. The true God, he held, would not employ irrational animals at all to reveal the future, nor even any chance human being, but only the purest of prophetic souls. Origen would appear for the moment to have forgotten Balaam’s ass! Moreover, he himself accepted other channels of foreknowledge than holy prophecy, and believed that dreams often were of value in this respect. When Celsus, criticizing the Scriptural story of the flight into Egypt, stated that an angel descended from heaven to warn Joseph and Mary of the danger threatening the Christ child, Origen retorted that the angelic warning came rather in a dream—an occurrence which seemed in no way marvelous to him, since “in many other cases it has happened that a dream has shown persons the proper course of action.”[1997] Origen grants that all men desire to ascertain the future and argues that the Jews must have had divine prophets, or, since they were forbidden by the Mosaic law to consult “observers of times and diviners,” they would have had no means of satisfying this universal human craving. It was to slake this popular curiosity concerning the future, Origen thinks, that the Hebrew seers sometimes predicted things of no religious significance or other lasting importance.[1998] Once Origen alludes to physiognomy, saying, “If there be any truth in the doctrine of the physiognomists, whether Zopyrus or Loxus or Polemon.”[1999]
[Sidenote: Animals and gems.]
The allusions to natural science in the Reply to Celsus are not numerous. There are a few passages where animals or gems are mentioned. The remarks concerning animals mention the usual favorites and embody familiar notions which we either have already met or shall meet again and again. Celsus speaks[2000] of the knowledge of poisons and medicines possessed by animals, of predictions by birds, of assemblies held by other animals, of the fidelity with which elephants observe oaths, of the filial affection of the stork, and of the Arabian bird, the phoenix.[2001] Origen implies the belief that the weasel conceives through its mouth when he says, “Observe, moreover, to what pitch of wickedness the demons proceed, so that they even assume the bodies of weasels in order to reveal the future.”[2002] Origen also adduces the marvelous methods of generation of several kinds of animals in support of the virgin birth of Jesus.[2003] Origen’s allusions to gems can scarcely be classified as natural science. He contends that Plato’s statement that our precious stones are a reflection of gems in that better land is taken from Isaiah’s description of the city of God.[2004] In another passage Origen again quotes Isaiah regarding the walls, foundations, battlements, and gates of various precious stones, but states that he cannot stop to examine their spiritual meaning at present.[2005] In one of his homilies on the Book of Numbers Origen displays a favorable attitude towards medical and pharmaceutical investigation, saying, “For if there is any science from God, what will be more from Him than the science of health, in which too the virtues of herbs and the diverse properties of juices are determined.”[2006]
[Sidenote: Origen later accused of countenancing magic.]
Origen’s belief that the stars were rational beings continued to be held by the sect called Origenists and also by the heretic Priscillian and his followers in the later fourth century. Priscillian, as we have seen, was accused of magic and executed in 385. But we are surprised to find Theophilus of Alexandria, who attacked some of Origen’s views as heretical and persuaded Pope Anastasius to do the same, accusing Origen in a letter written in 405 and translated into Latin by Jerome, of having defended magic.[2007] Theophilus states that Origen has written in one of his treatises, “The magic art seems to me a name for something which does not exist”—a bold and admirable assertion, but one which, as we have seen, the Epicurean Celsus would have been much more likely to make than the Christian Origen—“but if it does, it is not the name of an evil work.” Theophilus cannot understand how Origen, who vaunts himself a Christian, can thus make himself a protector of Elymas the magician who opposed the apostles and of Jamnes and Mambres who resisted Moses. Huet, the learned seventeenth century editor of Origen, knew of no such passage in his extant works as that which Theophilus professes to quote.[2008]
XX. OTHER CHRISTIAN DISCUSSION OF MAGIC BEFORE AUGUSTINE
Plan of this chapter—Tertullian on magic—Astrology attacked—Resemblance to Minucius Felix—Lactantius—Hippolytus on magic and astrology—Frauds of magicians in answering questions—Other tricks and illusions—Defects and merits of Hippolytus’ exposure of magic and of magic itself—Hippolytus’ sources—Justin Martyr and others on the witch of Endor—Gregory of Nyssa and Eustathius concerning the ventriloquist—Gregory of Nyssa Against Fate—Astrology and the birth of Christ—Chrysostom on the star of the Magi—Sixth Homily on Matthew—The spurious homily—Number, names, and home of the Magi—Liturgical drama of the Magi; Three Kings of Cologne—Another homily on the Magi—Priscillianists answered—Number and race of the Magi again.
[Sidenote: Plan of this chapter.]
In this chapter we shall supplement the picture of the Christian attitude towards magic supplied us in preceding chapters by some accounts of magic in other Christian writers of the period before Augustine. After giving the opinions of a few Latin fathers, Minucius Felix, Tertullian, and Lactantius, we shall consider the exposure of magic devices in Hippolytus’ Refutation of All Heresies, then compare the utterances of other fathers concerning the witch of Endor with those of Origen, and finally discuss the treatment of the Magi and the star of Bethlehem in both the genuine and the spurious homily of Chrysostom on that theme, adding some account of the medieval development of the legend of the three Magi, although leaving until later the statements of medieval theologians and astronomers concerning the star of the Magi. This makes a rather omnibus chapter, but its component parts are too brief to separate as distinct chapters and they all supplement the preceding chapter on Origen and Celsus.
[Sidenote: Tertullian on magic.]
Some important features of Origen’s account of magic are duplicated in the writings of the western church father, Tertullian, who wrote at about the same time or perhaps a few years before Origen. Again the Jews are represented as calling Christ a magician,[2009] and when Tertullian challenges the emperors to allow a Christian exorcist to appear before them and attempt to expel a demon from someone so possessed and force the spirit to confess its evil character, he expects that his Christian exorcist will be accused of employing magic.[2010] Again divination and magic are attributed to the fallen angels; in fact, Tertullian follows the Book of Enoch in stating that men were instructed by the fallen angels in metallurgy and botany as well as in incantations and astrology.[2011] The demons are represented as invisible and “everywhere in a moment.” Living as they do in the air near the clouds and stars, they are enabled to predict the weather. They send diseases and then pretend to cure them by the recommendation of novel remedies or prescriptions quite contrary to accepted medical practice.[2012] “There is hardly a human being who is unattended by a demon.”[2013] Magicians are described by Tertullian as producing phantasms, insulting the souls of the dead, injuring boys for purposes of divination, sending dreams, and performing many miraculous feats by their complicated jugglery.[2014] “The science of magic” is well defined as “a multiform contagion of the human mind, an artificer of every error, a destroyer of safety and soul.” As examples of well-known magicians Tertullian lists Ostanes and Typhon and Dardanus and Damigeron[2015] and Nectabis[2016] and Berenice. Tertullian states that a literature is current which promises to evoke ghosts from the infernal regions, but that in such cases the dead are really impersonated by demons, as was the fact when the pythoness seemed to show Samuel to Saul, a point on which Tertullian disagrees with Origen. Magic is therefore fallacious, a point which Tertullian emphasizes more than Origen did, although Tertullian is not very explicit. He avers that “it is no great task to deceive the outer eye of him whose mental insight it is easy to blind.” The rods of Pharaoh’s magicians seemed to turn into snakes, “but Moses’[2017] reality devoured their deceit.”
[Sidenote: Astrology attacked.]
Tertullian further diverges from Origen in definitely classifying astrology as a species of magic along with that other variety of magic which works miracles. Astrology is an art which was invented by the fallen angels and with which Christians should have nothing to do. Tertullian would not mention it but for the fact that recently a certain person has defended his persistence in that profession, that is, presumably after he had become a Christian. Tertullian states, again unlike Origen, that the Magi who came from the east to the Christ child were astrologers—“We know the union existing between magic and astrology”—but that Christ’s followers are under no obligation to astrology on their account, although he again implies the existence of Christian astrologers in the sarcastic remark, “Astrology now-a-days, forsooth, treats of Christ; is the science of the stars of Christ, not of Saturn and Mars.” As Origen affirmed that the power of the demons and of magic was greatly weakened by the birth of Christ, so Tertullian affirms that the science of the stars was allowed to exist until the coming of the Gospel, but that since Christ’s birth no one should cast nativities. “For since the Gospel you will never find sophist or Chaldean or enchanter or diviner or magician who has not been manifestly punished.”[2018] Tertullian rejoices that the mathematici or astrologers are forbidden to enter Rome or Italy, the reason being, as he states in another passage,[2019] that they are consulted so much in regard to the life of the emperor.
[Sidenote: Resemblance to Minucius Felix.]
Tertullian’s account of magic is perhaps borrowed from the dialogue entitled Octavius by M. Minucius Felix,[2020] which is generally regarded as the oldest extant work of Christian Latin literature and was probably written in the reign of Marcus Aurelius. Some of the words and phrases used by Tertullian and Minucius Felix in describing magic are almost identical,[2021] and a third passage of the same sort appears in Cyprian of Carthage in the third century.[2022] Ostanes, one of Tertullian’s list of magicians, is also mentioned as the first prominent magician by both Minucius Felix and Cyprian. Minucius Felix ascribes magic to demons and seems to regard it as a deceptive and rather unreal art, saying, “The magicians not only are acquainted with demons, but whatever miraculous feats they perform, they do through demons; under their influence and inspiration they produce illusions, making things seem to be which are not, or making real things seem non-existent.”
[Sidenote: Lactantius.]
A century after Tertullian Lactantius of Gaul treats of magic and demons in about the same way in his Divine Institutes,[2023] written at the opening of the fourth century. He denies that Christ was a magician and declares that His miracles differed from those attributed to Apuleius and Apollonius of Tyana in that they were announced beforehand by the prophets. “He worked marvels,” Lactantius says to his opponents, “and we should have thought Him a magician, as you think now and as the Jews thought at the time, had not all the prophets with one accord predicted that Christ would do these very things.”[2024] Lactantius believes that the offspring of the fallen angels and “the daughters of men” were a different variety of demon from their fathers and more terrestrial. Be that as it may, he affirms that the entire art and power of the magicians consist in invocations of demons who “deceive human vision by blinding illusions so that men do not see what does exist and think that they see what does not exist,”[2025] the very expression that we have just heard from Minucius Felix. More specifically Lactantius regards necromancy, oracles, liver-divination, augury, and astrology as all invented by the demons.[2026] Like Origen he emphasizes the power of the sign of the cross and the name of Jesus against the evil spirits,[2027] and he implies the power of the names of spirits when he states that, although demons may masquerade under other forms and names in pagan temples and worships, in magic and sorcery they are always summoned by their true names, those celestial ones which are read in sacred literature.[2028]
[Sidenote: Hippolytus on magic and astrology.]
From these accounts of magic in Latin fathers, which do little more than reinforce the impressions which we had already gained concerning the Christian attitude, we come to a very different discussion by Hippolytus who wrote in Greek although he lived in Italy. Eusebius and Jerome state that Origen as a young man heard Hippolytus preach at Rome; in 235 he was exiled to Sardinia; the next year his body was brought back to Rome for burial. In Hippolytus, instead of attacks upon astrology as impious, immoral, and fatalistic, and upon magic as evil and the work of demons, we have an attempt to prove astrology irrational and impracticable, and to show that magic is based upon imposture and deceit. In the first four of the nine books of his Philosophumena or Refutation of All Heresies[2029] Hippolytus set forth the tenets of the Greek philosophers, the system of the astrologers, and the practice of the magicians in order later to be able to show how much the various heretics had borrowed from these sources. His second and third books are not extant; it is in the fourth book or what is left of it that we have portions of his discussion of astrology and magic.[2030]
[Sidenote: Frauds of magicians in answering questions.]
In exposing the frauds of magicians Hippolytus uses the word μάγος, and not γόης, a sorcerer. He tells how the magicians pretend that the spirits give response through a medium to questions which those consulting them have written on papyrus, perhaps in invisible ink, and folded up, after which the papyrus is placed on coals and burned. The magician, however, operating in semi-darkness and making a great noise and diversion and pretending to invoke the demon, is really occupied in sprinkling the burnt papyrus with a mixture of water and copperas (vitriol?) or fumigating it with vapor of a gall nut or employing other methods to make the concealed letters visible. Having by some such method discovered the question, he instructs the medium, who is now supposed to be possessed of demons and is reclining upon a couch, what answer to give by whispering to him through a long hidden tube constructed out of the windpipe of a crane or ten brass pipes fitted together. It will be recalled that it was by such a tube made of the windpipes of cranes that Alexander the false prophet, according to Lucian, caused the artificial head of his god to give forth oracles. Hippolytus adds that at the same time the magician produces alarming flames and liquids by such chemical mixtures as fossil salts and Etruscan wax and a grain of salt. “And when this is consumed, the salts bound upward and give the impression of a strange vision.”[2031]
[Sidenote: Other tricks and illusions.]
Hippolytus also reveals how magicians secretly fill eggs with dyes, how they cause sheep to behead themselves against a sword by smearing their throats with a drug which makes them itch, how a ram dies if its head is merely bent back facing the sun, how they obstruct the ears of goats with wax so that they cannot breathe and presently die of suffocation, how out of sea foam they make a compound which, like alcohol, will itself burn but not consume the objects over which it is poured.[2032] He tells how the magician produces stage thunder, how he is able to plunge his hand into a boiling cauldron or walk over hot coals without being burnt, and how he can set a seeming pyramid of stone on fire. He tells how the magicians loosen seals and seal them up again, just as Lucian did in his Alexander or The Pseudo-Prophet; how by means of trap-doors, mirrors, and the like devices they show demons in a cauldron; how they pretend to show flaming demons by igniting drawings which they have sketched on the wall with some inflammable substance or by loosing a bird which has been set on fire. They make the moon appear indoors and imitate the starry sky by attaching fish scales to the ceiling. They produce the sensation of an earthquake by burning the ordure of a weasel with the stone magnet upon an open fire. They construct a false skull from the caul of an ox, some wax, and some gum, make it speak by means of a hidden tube, and then cause it suddenly to collapse and disappear or to burn up.[2033]
[Sidenote: Defects and merits of Hippolytus’ exposure of magic and of magic itself.]
This exposition of the frauds of the magicians by Hippolytus is rather broken and incoherent, at least in the form in which his text has reached us.[2034] Also we do not have much more faith in some of the methods by which he says the feats of magic are really done than he has in the ways by which the magicians claim to perform them. But while his notions of the chemical action of certain substances and of the occult virtue of others may be incorrect, the noteworthy point is that he endeavors to explain magic either as a deception or as employing natural substances and forces to simulate supernatural action, and that his exposure of magic devices leaves no place for the action of demons. Moreover, we see that magic fraud involves chemical experiment and considerable knowledge or error in the field of natural science. Under the guise or tyranny of magic experimental science is at work.
[Sidenote: Hippolytus’ sources.]
The question then arises whether Hippolytus himself discovered these tricks of the magicians or whether he is simply copying his explanations of them from some previous work. An examination of the earlier chapters of his fourth book is sufficient to solve the question. His arguments against the practice of the Chaldean astrologers of predicting man’s life from his horoscope at the time of his birth are drawn from the pages of the sceptical philosopher, Sextus Empiricus, whom he follows so closely that his editors are able to rectify his text by reference to the parallel passage in Sextus. We are therefore probably safe in assuming, especially in view of the resemblances to the Alexander of Lucian which have already been noted, that Hippolytus’ attack on magic is also largely indebted to some classical work, possibly to that very treatise against magic by Celsus to which both Origen and Lucian refer, or perhaps to some account of apparatus with which to work marvels like Hero’s Pneumatics.
[Sidenote: Justin Martyr and others on the witch of Endor.]
Turning back now to the subject of the witch of Endor, we find that some of the church fathers agree with Origen rather than Tertullian that the witch really invoked Samuel. Before Origen’s time Justin Martyr in The Dialogue with Trypho[2035] had mentioned as a proof of the immortality of the soul “the fact that the soul of Samuel was called up by the witch, as Saul demanded.” Huet, who edited the writings of Origen, lists other Christian authors[2036] who agreed with Origen on this question, and further informs us that the ancient rabbis were wont to say that a soul invoked within a year after its death as Samuel’s was, would be seen by the ventriloquist but not heard, and heard by the person consulting it but not seen, an observation which suggests that Saul was deceived by ventriloquism, while by others present the ghost would be neither seen nor heard.
[Sidenote: Gregory of Nyssa and Eustathius concerning the ventriloquist.]
Two ecclesiastics of the fourth century composed special treatises upon the ventriloquist or witch of Endor in which they took the opposite view from that of Origen. The briefer of these two treatises is by Gregory of Nyssa[2037] who states, without mentioning Origen by name, that some previous writers have contended that Samuel was truly invoked by magic with divine permission in order that he might see his mistake in having called Saul the enemy of ventriloquists. But Gregory believes that Samuel was already in paradise and hence could not be invoked from the infernal regions; but that it was a demon from the infernal regions who predicted to Saul, “To-morrow you and Jonathan shall be with me.” The longer treatise of Eustathius of Antioch is a direct answer to Origen’s argument as its title, Concerning the Ventriloquist against Origen,[2038] indicates. Eustathius holds that it was illegal to consult ventriloquists in view of Saul’s own previous action against them and other prohibitions in Scripture, and that Origen’s remarks are to be deplored as tending to encourage simple men to resort to arts of divination. Eustathius contends that the witch did not invoke Samuel but only made Saul think that she did, and that Saul himself did not see Samuel. Pharaoh’s magicians similarly deceived the imagination with shadows and specters when they pretended to turn rods into snakes and water into blood. Eustathius does not agree with Origen that Samuel was in hell. He holds that the predictions made by the pseudo-Samuel were not impossible for a demon to make, and indeed were not strictly accurate, since Saul did not die the very next day but the day after it, and since not only Jonathan but his three sons were slain with him.[2039] Furthermore, David was already so prominent in public affairs that a demon might easily guess that he would succeed Saul.
[Sidenote: Gregory of Nyssa Against Fate.]
Gregory of Nyssa also composed a treatise, entitled Against Fate,[2040] in the form of a disputation between a pagan philosopher and himself at Constantinople in 382 A. D. His opponent holds that the life of man is determined by the constellations at his nativity, upon whose decree even conversion to Christianity would thus be made dependent. Gregory assumes the position of one hitherto ignorant of the principles of the art of astrology, of which the philosopher has to inform him, but on general grounds it seems very unlikely that he really was as ignorant as this of such a widespread superstition. Furthermore, he is sufficiently read in the subject to incorporate some of Bardesanes’ arguments, of whose treatise both Gregory’s title and dialogue form are reminiscent. Some of Gregory’s reasoning, however, might well be that of a tyro and is scarcely worth elaborating here.
[Sidenote: Astrology and the birth of Christ.]
When the writer of the Gospel according to Matthew included the story of the wise men from the east who had seen the star, there can be little or no doubt that he inserted it and that it had been formulated in the first place, not merely in order to satisfy the ordinary, unlearned reader with portents connected with the birth of Jesus, but to secure the appearance of support for the kingship of Jesus from that art or science of astrology which so many persons then held in high esteem. To an age whose sublimest science was star-gazing it would seem fitting and almost inevitable that God should have announced the coming of the Prince of Peace in this manner, and the account in the Gospel of Matthew is in a sense an attempt to present the birth of Christ in a way to comply with the most searching tests of contemporary science. But the early Christians were relatively rude and unlettered, and this effort to construct a royal horoscope for Jesus is a crude and faulty one from the astrological standpoint. For this, however, the author of the Gospel and not the art of astrology is obviously responsible. As a result, however, of the Gnostic reaction against astrological fatalism or of an orthodox Christian opposition to both Gnostics and astrologers, most of the early fathers of the church denied that this passage implied any recognition of the truth of astrology and attempted to explain away its obvious meaning. In doing this they often made the crude and imperfect astrology of the Gospel a criterion for criticizing the art of astrology itself.
[Sidenote: Chrysostom on the star of the Magi.]
Of patristic commentaries upon the passage in the Gospel of Matthew dealing with the Magi and the star of Bethlehem one of the fullest and most frequently cited by medieval writers is that attributed to Chrysostom. I say “attributed,” because in addition to his genuine sixth homily upon Matthew[2041] there was generally ascribed to Chrysostom in the middle ages another homily which is extant only in Latin[2042] and has been thought to be the work of some Arian. The famous St. John Chrysostom was born at Antioch about 347 A. D. and there studied rhetoric under the noted sophist Libanius. From 398 to 404 he held the office of patriarch of Constantinople; then he was exiled to Cappadocia where he died in 407. One detail of his boyhood may be noted because of its connection with magic. When he was a lad, the tyrants in the city became suspicious of plots against them and sent soldiers to search for books of magic and sorcery. One of the men who was arrested and put to death had tried to rid himself of the damaging possession of a book of magic by throwing it into the river. Chrysostom and a playmate later unsuspectingly fished an object out of the water which turned out to be this very book, and when a soldier happened to pass by just then, they were very frightened lest he should see what they had and they should be severely punished for it.[2043]
[Sidenote: Sixth homily on Matthew.]
In his sixth homily upon Matthew Chrysostom recognizes the difficulties presented by the Scriptural account of the Magi and the star, and approaches the task of expounding it with prayers to God for aid. Some, he informs us, take the passage as an admission of the truth of astrology. It is this opinion which he is concerned to refute. He argues that it is not the function of astronomy to learn from the stars who are being born but merely to predict from the hour of birth what is going to happen, which seems a quite fallacious distinction upon his part. He also criticizes the Magi for calling Jesus the king of the Jews, when as Christ told Pilate His kingdom was not of this world. He further criticizes them for coming to Christ’s birthplace when they might have known that it would cause difficulties with Herod, the existing king, and for coming, making trouble, and then immediately going back home again. But these shortcomings would seem to be those of the Scriptural narrative rather than of the art of astrology, although of course Chrysostom is trying to make the point that the Magi had not foreseen what would happen to themselves. He further argues that the star of Bethlehem was not like other stars nor even a star at all,[2044] as was proved by its peculiar itinerary, its shining by day, its rare intelligence in hiding itself at the right time, and its miraculous ability in standing over the head of the child. Chrysostom therefore concludes that some invisible virtue put on the form of a star. He thinks that the star appeared to the Magi as a reflection upon the Jews, who had rejected prophet after prophet, whereas the apparition of a single star was sufficient to bring barbarian Magi to the feet of Christ. At the same time he believes that God especially favored the Magi in vouchsafing them a star, a sign to which they were accustomed, as the mode of announcement. Thus he comes dangerously near to admitting tacitly what he has just been denying, namely, that the stars are signs of the future and that there is something in the art of astrology. In short, the star appeared to the Magi because they as astrologers would comprehend its meaning. Chrysostom denies this openly and does his best to think up arguments against it, but he cannot rid his subconscious thought of the idea.
[Sidenote: The spurious homily.]
The other homily ascribed to Chrysostom repeats some of the points made in the genuine homily, but adds others. The preacher has read somewhere, perhaps in Origen where we have already met the suggestion, that the Magi had learned that the star would appear from the books of the diviner Balaam, “whose divination is also put into the Old Testament: ‘A star shall arise from Jacob and a man shall come forth from Israel, and he shall rule all nations.’” But the preacher does not state why it is any better to have such a prediction made by a diviner than by an astrologer. The preacher has also heard some cite a writing, which is not surely authentic but yet is not destructive to the Faith and rather pleasing, to the effect that in the extreme east on the shores of the ocean live a people who possess a writing inscribed with the name of Seth and dealing with the appearance of this star and the gifts to be offered. This writing was handed down from father to son through successive generations, and twelve of the most studious men of their number were chosen to watch for the coming of the star, and whenever one died, another was chosen in his place. They were called Magi in their language because they glorified God silently. Every year after the threshing of the harvest they climbed a mountain to a cave with delightful springs shaded by carefully selected trees. There they washed themselves and for three days in silence prayed and praised God. Finally one year the star appeared in the form of a little child with the likeness of a cross above it; and it spoke with them and taught them and instructed them to set out for Judea.[2045] When they had set out, it went before them for two years, during which time food and drink were never lacking in their wallets. On their return they worshiped and glorified God more sedulously than ever and preached to their people. Finally, after the resurrection, the apostle Thomas visited that region and they were baptized by him and were made his assistant preachers. This tale is indeed pleasing enough, and it saves the Magi from all imputation of magic arts and employment of demons and even denies that they were astrologers. But as a device to escape the natural inference from the Gospel story that the birth of Christ was announced by the stars and in a way which astronomers could comprehend it is certainly far-fetched, and shows how Christian theologians were put to it to find a way out of the difficulty. The homily goes on to advance some of the usual arguments against astrology, such as that the stars cannot cause evil, that the human will is free, and that a science of individual horoscopes cannot account for all men worshiping idols before Christ and abandoning idolatry and other ancient customs thereafter, or for the perishing in the deluge of all men except the family of Noah, or for national customs such as circumcision among the Jews and incest among the Persians. Here we again probably see the influence of Bardesanes.
[Sidenote: Number, names, and home of the Magi.]
We have already noted that Origen seems to have been the first of the fathers to state the number of the Magi as three, whereas the homily just considered implies that there were twelve of them. Their representation in art as three in number did not become general until the fourth century,[2046] while the depiction of them as kings was also a gradual and, according to Kehrer, later growth.[2047] Bouché-Leclercq, citing an earlier monograph,[2048] states that the royalty of the Magi was invented towards the sixth century to show the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies,[2049] and that Bede is the first who knows their names. But Mâle says, “Their mysterious names are first found in a Greek chronicle of the beginning of the sixth century translated into Latin by a Merovingian monk,” and are “Bithisarea, Melichior, Gathaspa.”[2050] The provenance of the Magi was variously stated by the Christian fathers:[2051] Arabia according to Justin Martyr, Epiphanius, and Tertullian or Pseudo-Tertullian; Persia according to Clement of Alexandria, Basil, and Cyril; Persia or Chaldea according to Chrysostom and Diodorus of Tarsus; Chaldea according to Jerome and Augustine and the philosopher Chalcidius in his commentary upon Plato’s Timaeus.[2052] The homily which we were just considering gave the impression that they came from India.
[Sidenote: Liturgical drama of the Magi: The Three Kings of Cologne.]
In the middle ages the Magi appeared in liturgical drama as well as in art. An early instance is a tenth century lectionary from Compiègne, now preserved at Paris,[2053] where after homilies by various fathers there is added in a hand only slightly later the liturgical drama of the adoration of the Magi. In the later middle ages there came into existence the History or Deeds of the Three Kings of Cologne, as the Magi came to be called from the supposed translation of their relics to that city. Their bodies were said to have been brought by the empress Helena from India to Constantinople, whence they were transferred to Milan, and after its destruction by Barbarossa, to Cologne. This “fabulous narration,” as it has well been entitled,[2054] also has much to say of the miracles of the apostle Thomas in India and of Prester John, to whom we shall devote a later chapter. It asserts that the three kings reached Jerusalem on the thirteenth day after Christ’s birth by a miraculously rapid transit by day and by night of themselves and their armies to the marvel of the inhabitants of the towns through which they passed, or rather, flew.[2055] After they had returned home and had successively migrated to Christ above, another apparition of a star marked this fact.[2056] The treatise exists in many manuscripts[2057] and was printed more than once before 1500.
[Sidenote: Another homily on the Magi.]
Finally we may note the contents of the homily on the Magi which immediately precedes the liturgical drama concerning them in the above mentioned tenth century lectionary.[2058] The Magi are said to have come on the thirteenth day of Christ’s nativity. That they came from the Orient was fitting since they sought one of whom it had been written, Ecce vir oriens. It was also fitting that Christ’s coming should be announced to shepherds of Israel by a rational angel, to Gentile Magi by an irrational star. This star appeared neither in the starry heaven nor on earth but in the air; it had not existed before and ceased to exist after it had fulfilled its function. Although he has just said that the star appeared in the air and not in the sky, the preacher now adds that when a new man was born in the world it was fitting that a new star should appear in the sky. He also, in pointing out how all the elements recognized that their Creator had come into the world, states that the sky sent a star, the sea allowed Him to walk upon it, the sun was darkened, stones were broken and the earth quaked when He died.
[Sidenote: Priscillianists answered.]
Since the heretics known as Priscillianists have adduced the star at Christ’s birth to prove that every man is born under the fates of the stars, the preacher endeavors to answer them. He holds that since the star came to where Jesus lay He controlled it rather than vice versa. Then follow the usual arguments against genethlialogy that many men born under the sign Aquarius are not fishermen, that sons of serfs are born at the same time as princes, and the case of Jacob and Esau. The star was merely a sign to the Magi and by its twinkling illuminated their minds to seek the new-born babe. It seems scarcely consistent that a star which the preacher has called irrational should illuminate minds.
[Sidenote: Number and race of the Magi again.]
The homily goes on to say that opinions differ as to who the Magi were and whence they came. Owing to the prophecy that the kings of Tarsus and the isles offer presents, the kings of the Arabs and Sheba bring gifts, some regard Tarsus, Arabia, and Sheba as the homes of the Magi. Others call them Persians or Chaldeans, since Chaldeans are skilled in astronomy. Others say that they were descendants of Balaam. At any rate they were the first Gentiles to seek Christ and they are well said to have been three, symbolizing faith in the Trinity, the three virtues, faith, hope and charity, the three safeguards against evil, thoughts, words and works, and the three Gentile contributions to the Faith of physics, ethics, and logic, or natural, moral, and rational philosophy. The preacher then indulges in further allegorical interpretation anent Herod and what was typified by the gifts of the Magi.[2059]