Worship of the Generative Powers: Mediaeval Secret Societies

Mediaeval Secret Societies

The leaden tokens, or medalets, which we have already described, 71 seem to point evidently to the existence in the middle ages of secret societies or clubs connected with this obscene worship, besides the public festivals. Of these it can hardly be expected that any description would survive, but, if not the fact, the belief in it is clearly established by the eagerness with which such obscene rites were laid to the charge of most of the mediæval secret societies, whether lay clubs or religious sects, and we know that secret societies abounded in the middle ages. However willing the Romish clergy were to make profit out of the popular phallic worship, they were

(one line missing--JBH) sexual intercourse in their meetings, were ascribed by the early Christian controversialists to several sects, such as the followers of Florian, and of Carpocratian, who were accused of putting out the lamps in their churches at the end of the evening service, and indulging in sexual intercourse indiscriminately; the Nicolaitæ, who held their wives in common; the Ebionei; and especially the Gnostics, or followers of Basilides, and the Manichæans. The Nicolaites held that the only way to salvation lay through frequent intercourse between the sexes. 72 Epiphanius speaks of a sect who sacrificed a child in their secret rites by pricking it with brazen pins, and then offering its blood. 73 The Gnostics were accused of eating human flesh as well as of lasciviousness, and they also are said to have held their women in

74 They knew their fellow sectarians by a secret sign, which consisted in tickling the palm of the hand with the finger in a peculiar manner. The sign having been recognized, mutual confidence was established, and the stranger was invited to supper; after they had eaten their fill, the husband removed from the side of his wife, and said to her, "Go, exhibit charity to our guest," which was the signal for those further scenes of hospitality. This account is given us by St. Epiphanius, bishop of Constantia. We are told further of rites practiced by the Gnostics, which were still more disgusting, for they were said, after these libidinous scenes, to offer and administer the semen virile as their sacrament. 75 A similar practice is described as existing among women in the middle ages for the purpose of securing the love of their husbands, and was perhaps derived from the Gnostics and Manichæans, whose doctrines, brought from the East, appear to have spread themselves extensively into Western Europe.

Of these doctrines, however, we have no traces at

somewhat modified, and under the shadow of secret rites, was imported into Western Europe; for, if we make allowance for the willing exaggerations of religious hatred, and consequent popular prejudice, the general conviction that these sectarians had rites and practices of a licentious character appears too strong to be entirely disregarded, nor does it present anything contrary to what we know of the state of mediæval society, or to the facts which have already been brought forward in the present essay. These early sects appear to have professed doctrines rather closely resembling modern communism, including, like those of their earlier sectarian predecessors, the community of women; and this community naturally implies the abolition of distinctive affinities. One of the writers against the mediæval heretics assures us that there were "many professed Christians, both men and women, who feared no more to go to their sister, or son or daughter, or brother, or nephew or niece, or kin or relation, than to their own wife or husband." They were accused, beyond this, of indulging in unnatural vices, and this charge was so generally believed, that the name of Bulgarus, or heretic, became equivalent with Sodomite, and hence came the modern French word bougre, and its English representatives.

a patiendo. Other writers have suggested a different derivation, but the one first given appears to be that most generally accepted. The different sects or congregations

possession of voluntary poverty they are sometimes spoken of by the name of Pauperes de Lugduno, the paupers of Lyons. Contemporaries speak of the Waldenses as being generally poor ignorant people; yet they spread widely over that part of France and into the valleys of Switzerland, and became so celebrated, that at last nearly all the mediæval heretics were usually classed under the head of Waldenses. Another sect,

76 Like the other heretical sects, these Cathari were accused of indulging in unnatural vices,

recipe).

77 It was the belief of most of the old sects of this class, as well as of the more ancient Pagans from whom they were derived, that those who were fully initiated into their most secret mysteries became endowed with powers and faculties above those possessed by ordinary individuals. A list of the errors of the Waldenses, printed in the Reliquiæ Antiquæ, from an English manuscript, enumerates among them that they met to indulge in promiscuous sexual intercourse, and held perverse doctrines in accordance with it; that, in some parts, the devil appeared to them in the form of a cat, and that each kissed him under the tail; and that in other parts they rode to the place of meeting upon a staff anointed with a certain unguent, and were conveyed thither in a moment of time. The writer adds that,

Our old chroniclers exult over the small success which attended the efforts of these heretics from France and the South to introduce themselves into our island. 79 These sects, with secret and obscene rites, appear, indeed, to have found most favour among the peoples who spoke a dialect derived from the Latin, and this we might naturally be led to expect, for the fact of the preservation of the Latin tongue is itself a proof of the greater force of the Roman element in the society, that from which these secret rites appear to have been chiefly derived. It is a curious circumstance, in connection with this subject, that the popular oaths and exclamations among the people speaking the languages derived from the Romans are almost all composed of the names of the objects of this phallic worship, an entire contrast to the practice of the Teutonic tribes--the vulgar oaths of the people speaking Neo-Latin dialects are obscene, those of the German race are profane. We have seen how the women of Antwerp, who, though perhaps they did not speak the Roman dialect, appear to have been much influenced by Roman sentiments, made their

Frenchman, was and is used more generally as an expression of contempt, which is also the case with the testicles, couillons, in French--those who have had experience in the old days of "diligence" travelling will remember how usual it was for the driver, when the horses would not go quick enough, to address the leader in such terms as, "Va, donc, vieux con!" We have no such words used in this manner in the Germanic languages, with the exception, perhaps, of the German Potz! and Potztausend! and the English equivalent, Pox! which last is gone quite out of use. There was an attempt among the fashionables of our Elizabethan age of literature, to introduce the Italian cazzo under the form of catso, and the French foutre under that of foutra, but these were mere affectations of a moment, and were so little in accord with our national sentiments that they soon disappeared.

The earliest accounts of a sect which held secret meetings for celebrating obscene rites is found in

80 as evidence of the existence of such societies, for these curious objects appear to admit of no other satisfactory explanation than that of having been in use in secret clubs of a very impure character.

It has been already remarked that people soon seized upon accusations of this kind as excuses for persecution, religious and political, and we meet with a curious example in the earlier half of the thirteenth century. The district of Steding, in the north of Germany, now known as Oldenburg, was at the beginning of the thirteenth century inhabited by a people who lived in sturdy independence, but the archbishops of Bremen seem to have claimed some sort of feudal superiority over them, which they resisted by force. The archbishop, in revenge, declared them

Footnotes

104:71 See before, p. 60, and Plate IX.

107:72 Epiphanii Panarium, vol. I, p. 72.

107:73 Epiphanius, vol. i, p. 416.

108:74 On the secret worship and character of the Gnostics, see Epiphanii Panarium, vol. i, pp. 84-102.

108:75 See details on this subject In Epiphanii Panarium, ib. Conf. Prædestinati Adversus Haeres., lib. i, c. 46, where the same thing is said of the Manichæans.

114:76 Bonacursus, Vita Haereticorum, in D'Achery, Spicilegium, tom. i, p. 209. This book is considered to have been written about the year 1190.

116:77 Radulphus Cogeshalenfis, In the Amplissima Collectio of Martene and Durand. On the offences with which the different sects comprised under the name of Waldenses were charged, see Gretser's Scriptores contra Sectam Waldensium, which will be found in the twelfth volume of his works, Bonacursus, Vita Haereticorum, in the first volume of D'Achery's Spicilegium, and the work of a Carthusian monk in Martene and Durand, Amplissima Collectio, vol. vi, col. 57 et seq.

117:78 Wright and Halliwell, Reliquæ Antiquae, vol. i, p. 247.

117:79 See, for example, Guil, Neubrigensis, De Rebus Anglicis, lib. ii, c. 13, and Walter Mapes, de Nugis Curialium, p. 62.

120:80 See before, p. 60, and Plate IX.

Worship of the Generative Powers: Mediaeval Secret Societies

Mediaeval Secret Societies

Footnotes

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