Chapter III: Part 3

Of course, in those days as in these, the fee had to be considered. Guineas had not then been coined, and payment was usually made in candles, burnt at the shrine of the saint, a mode of remuneration that, for my own part, I am glad to say has been abandoned. This method of payment was rather after that of the sister profession than of modern medicine. The saint had a number of candles marked on his brief, as it were, and unless the retainer was satisfactory, he refused to look at the papers. No doubt there were needy saints, not too scrupulous, who would undertake any case for a candle or two, whether they were qualified to treat it or not; just as now there are sixpenny doctors, and surgeons who will undertake a case of mental disease; but it is to be hoped that the leaders of the profession had more conscience, and that a saint who specialised on blindness, for instance, would no more undertake a dislocation or a fracture than a Chancery leader would undertake the defence of a prisoner at the Old Bailey, or a reputable surgeon would treat a patient suffering from mental disorder.

So far, then, our mediæval ancestors were thoroughly well provided with patrons. There was scarcely any occasion in life that had not a saint who had specialised in its requirements and was ready to supply them for a consideration—for a sufficient number of candles. But it is evident that such a complete equipment of saints could not have been suddenly, nor even rapidly constituted. It must have been the growth of years and of generations; and moreover, we must remember that there was a time, at the beginning of the Christian era, when, though sins were very many, saints were very few, and until the large additions made to the noble army of martyrs in the reign of Diocletian, there could not possibly have been saints enough to go round; and if we go further back, and recede from the penumbra of early A.D. to the outer darkness of B.C., we enter a benighted world in which there were no saints at all. The prospect appals! We might almost as well contemplate a world in which there were no barristers. The question presents itself, and presses upon us with irresistible force—What did our unhappy ancestors do in a world in which there were no saints? It is clear that patrons or protectors of some kind they must have had, for in pre-Christian, no more than in mediæval times, was there any conviction or knowledge of the operation of natural laws. How do we know this? We have it on unexceptionable authority. A contemporary writer, who is generally believed to have been inspired, asserts ‘He hath not dealt so with any nation, neither have the heathen any knowledge of his laws.’ Consequently, there was the same lack of any rule or governance in the happening of events. Everything went by chance, according as the devil or the saints were paying attention, or got the upper hand at the moment. But there were no saints. Hence it would appear that the devil must have had it all his own way, and that the affairs of men must have been uniformly and invariably unfortunate. But they were not, for man survived. He not only survived, but he prospered and flourished. He increased and multiplied exceedingly. Men organised themselves into great nations, built great cities, and were subject to mighty kings. Egypt, Nineveh, Babylon, Assyria, Persia, the Empire of India and the greater Empire of China, all attest that, long before there were saints to interest themselves in him, man succeeded, somehow or other, in antagonising the devil and getting the better of him. It is of the utmost interest and importance to discover how he did this, and what were the means that he employed; and this brings me to the middle of my song, and the second part of my paper. I am now done with Saints. It is clear that they were not as indispensable as they made themselves out; and—I say it with reluctance, but—I have grave doubts whether they did not lay claim, if not to powers they did not possess, at any rate to the exclusive possession of powers by no means peculiar to them. We know, indeed, that on one historical occasion, St Dunstan did seize the devil by the nose with a pair of tongs; and we are told, on less unimpeachable authority, but we are told, that St Nicholas kicked him on a place which is described as being near the spot where the tail joins on to the small of the back; but with these exceptions, though he was constantly outwitted, and indeed he appears to be a kind of Simple Simon, easily gulled by the most transparent device, and no more astute than the victims of the confidence trick—with these exceptions, I say, there are few, if any, records of personal encounters with the devil till we come down to Martin Luther; and Martin Luther was not a saint. He was never, I understand, canonised, and I am informed on good authority, in reply to inquiry made in the highest quarters, that any application to Rome for his canonisation would have little or no chance of success.

Still, whatever unaccountable prejudices may exist at Rome against the canonisation of this great and good man, I cannot see that we are any nearer a solution of the most important, and indeed vital question, What did men do for patrons before they had saints to fly to? This, gentlemen, is the great and epoch-making discovery that I have to announce to you on this memorable evening. This is the brilliant result of years of laborious research. This is the golden fruit of a lifetime of very insufficiently rewarded toil. Why should I repine that the paltry metal counters that I exhibited at the beginning of this address are so scarce and rare, when I have garnered so abundantly rewards so much more precious? What did men do for patronage and protection before they had saints to place themselves under? Why, this was what they did. Not to keep you in suspense any longer, I will at once reveal that they sought the protection of the Signs of the Zodiac and of the Planets; and as far as it is possible to judge, the protection they obtained therefrom was as ample, as efficient, and as abundant, as that of all the saints in the calendar.

Many centuries before a single saint had been canonised, the system of patronage by the heavenly bodies was completely organised—was, if I may so put it, in full swing; and all the Christian hagiology did was to adopt this system, ousting the heavenly bodies, and filling their places with saints. Long before St Louis, or St Andrew, or that successful commissary St George, was born or thought of, every nation and city of antiquity had its patron Sign. Every calling had its own patron Sign or Planet; every part of the body its patron Sign or Planet: and every illness had a double process of cure, being remediable not only by certain drugs, but according to the position and movement of the Planets among the Signs when the drugs were collected and when they were administered. The series of saints and the series of Signs present a complete parallel, and it is evident that in this as in other things Christianity took advantage of a pre-existing organisation and adapted it to its own uses. It took the institution of patronage by celestial personages, as it took the institution of periodical festivals; emptied them of their previous contents, and filled them with Christian matter, leaving the pagan form unaltered. Thus it took the great annual winter festival, and altered it arbitrarily to Christmas day, pretending that it is the anniversary of the birth of Christ, for which there is not one tittle of evidence; but it could not, or did not, alter the minor weekly festival which still has its name from the greatest of the Planets. In these cases the supersession was either complete or none at all, but in other matters, and especially in the matter of patronage and protection, the struggle was very prolonged, and for ages the two systems of patronage existed side by side; and alongside the priests, who were experts in advising as to the appropriate saint to invoke, were the astrologers, experts in advising the proper conjunction or disposition of the heavenly bodies to wait for before beginning any undertaking or altering any course of action, and also for the purpose of determining whether a course of action was or was not judicious, and calculated to be successful. Between the two sets of practitioners there was a natural jealousy. The Church forbad recourse being had to the aid of Astrology, and threatened excommunication to anyone who consulted the rival expert, just as at present the orthodox physician boycotts the homœopath. On the other hand the astrologer, who was often an infidel, often a Jew or an Arab, despised and ridiculed the pretensions of the saints. Whatever faith, or want of faith, either sect had in its own ministrations, neither was without an uneasy feeling that the other might, after all, have something in it. The astrologers were not above invoking the aid of the saints in their own personal difficulties, and the very Popes who issued bulls fulminating against Astrology and its practitioners, yet kept their own private astrologers, whom they consulted on the sly. In spite of their mutual antagonism, however, the two systems existed side by side for many centuries, and neither can boast of a complete triumph over the other. Astrology is dead, it is true, but in Protestant countries the invocation of saints perished long before its rival, and the influence of the heavenly bodies was consulted by very many who would have scorned to invoke a saint.

Very many days in the year had their patron saints, and those who are familiar with old chronicles know that the date of an event was never signalised by the day of the month, but always by the saint’s day that it fell upon, or, in the few cases in which the day had not been appropriated by some saint or other, the date was signalised as being on the eve of the day following, which was sure to have its patron saint, or the morrow of the previous day. Correspondingly, every day of the week had its patron Planet. The number seven was chosen for the days of the week, no doubt because in seven days the moon completes a quarter, and in 28 days completes its revolution. By a curious coincidence, the number of Planets known to the ancient world was also seven, and hence it was natural that to every Planet should be assigned one day in the week. By an easy transition, made at a time that I have not been able to identify, but that was certainly very early, the powers of the Planets and those of the gods became transferable, and with the powers the names, so that only three of the seven days of the week, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, are known by the names of Planets, the remaining four being called after the corresponding gods.

As with days, so with other things. We have seen that to some saint or other every part of the body was apportioned; and similarly the body was carved up and portioned out among the Signs of the Zodiac, as we find in the chapter of Arnaldus de Villanova, _De quolibet signo quod membrum in corpore respicit_, and as is set forth in the first lecture in this book, so that it is clear that the heathen had as good a choice of celestial specialists as ever the Christians had.

Time fails me to carry out the parallel in further detail, but just as the patron Sign of England is St George, and the effigy of St George appears upon our coins, so the patron Sign of Syria was Aries, and the effigy of the Ram appears on Syrian coins. Similarly, Palmyra was under the patronage of Libra, and on the coins of Palmyra appears the Balance. Similarly, individuals had their patron Signs before ever they had their patron saints. The patron Sign of Augustus was Capricorn, of Pythodeia Queen of Pontus, the Balance. The custom continued well into mediæval times and into Christian countries, and King Stephen of England adopted and placed on his coins the patron Sign of Sagittarius.

CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A. AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS