Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe - Sabine Baring-Gould (books to read to improve english TXT) 📗

below the surface of the ground. It stood on the east side of the church, in the churchyard, encompassed with a wall, and surrounded by circles or cells, called the beds, scarcely three feet high, denominated from several saints. The penitents who visited the island, after fasting on bread and water for nine days and making processions round these holy stations thrice a day barefoot, for the first seven days, and six times on the eighth, washing their weary limbs each night in the lake, on the ninth enter the cave. Here they observe a twenty-four hours fast, tasting only a little water, and upon quitting it bathe in the lake, and so conclude the ceremony.

"Leave being first obtained of the bishop, the prior represented to the penitents all the horror and difficulty of the undertaking, suggesting to them at the same time an easier penance. If they persevered in their resolution, they were conducted to the door with a procession from the convent, and after twenty-four hours confinement let out next morning with the like ceremony." [Footnote: "St. Patrick's Purgatory," by Thomas Wright, London, 1844. _Analecta Bollandiana,_ t. xxvii. (1908). O'Connor, "St. Patrick's Purgatory," Dublin, 1895. MacRitchie, "A Note on St. Patrick's Purgatory," in the Journal of the Roy. Soc. of Ant. of Ireland, 1901.]

As may well be supposed, after the long preliminaries and the heavy fees paid, the penitents could hardly, unless unusually strong-minded like the Dutch monk, declare roundly that they had seen nothing. I do not suppose, as already said, that there was any fraud deliberately enacted, personages dressing up as devils and angels, but that the visitor's own dreams, and his vanity or lively imagination were left to propagate the story of the marvels to be seen and heard in Lough Derg.

But wonderful caves, entrances to a mysterious underworld, are common in all countries. A story is told of Friar Conrad, the Confessor of S. Elizabeth of Thuringia, a barbarous, brutal man, who was sent into Germany by Gregory IX. to burn and butcher heretics. The Pope called him his "dilectus filius." In 1231 he was engaged in controversy with a heretical teacher, who, beaten in argument, according to Conrad's account, offered to show him Christ and the Blessed Virgin, who with their own mouths would ratify the doctrine taught by the heretic. To this Conrad submitted, and was led into a cave in the mountains. After a long descent they entered a hall brilliantly illumined, in which sat a King on a golden throne and by him the Queen Mother. The heretic prostrated himself in adoration, and bade Conrad do the same. But the latter drew forth a consecrated host and adjured the vision, whereupon all vanished.

The German stories of the mountain of Venus, in which the Tannhaeuser remains, or of Frederick Barbarossa, in the Unterberg, or the Welsh stories of King Arthur in the heart of the mountain, seen occasionally, or the Danish fables of Holger Dansk in the vaults under the Kronnenburg, all refer to the generally spread belief in an underworld inhabited by spirits.

In the year 1529 died Lazarus Aigner of Bergheim, near Salzburg, a poor man. At his death he handed over to his son a MS. account of a descent he had made into the underworld in 1484, and this was at once published and created a considerable sensation.

According to his account, in the year just mentioned, he was on the Unterberg with his master, the parish priest, Elbenberger, and another, when they visited a chapel on the rock, above the entrance to which were cut the letters S.O.R.G.E.I.S.A.T.O.M., out of which they could make nothing.

On returning home the priest observed that he wished that Lazarus would revisit the place, and make sure that the inscription had been accurately copied. Accordingly, next day, Aigner reascended the mountain and found the chapel again. But he had started late, having his ordinary work to do before he had leisure to go, and the evening was darkening in. As the way led by precipices, he deemed it inadvisable to retrace his steps that night, and so laid himself down to sleep. Next morning, Thursday, he woke refreshed, but to his amazement saw standing before him an aged barefooted friar, who asked him whence he came and what had brought him there. To this Lazarus Aigner answered truthfully. Then the hermit said to him, "I will explain to you what is the signification of these letters, and will show you something in vision."

Then the barefooted friar led him into a chasm, and unlocked an iron door in the rock, by means of which Lazarus was admitted into the heart of the mountain. There he saw a huge hall out of which went seven passages that led to the cathedral of Salzburg, the church of Reichenhall, Feldkirch in Tirol, Gemund, Seekirchen, S. Maximilien, S. Michael, Hall, St. Zeno, Traunstein, S. Dionysius and S. Bartholmae on the Konigsee. Here also Aigner saw divine worship conducted by dead monks and canons, and with the attendance of countless dead of all times in strange old-world costumes. He recognised many whom he had known when alive. Then he was shown the library, and given the interpretation of the mysterious letters, but as it was in Latin, Aigner forgot it. After seven days and as many nights spent in the underground world, he returned to daylight, and as the hermit parted with him he solemnly bade him reserve the publication of what he had seen and heard till the expiration of thirty-five years, when times of distress and searchings of heart would come, and then the account of his vision might be of profit. And exactly at the end of the thirty- five years Lazarus Aigner died. There can be little doubt that, if the whole was not a clumsy fabrication, it was the record of a dream he had when sleeping, on the mountain outside the chapel of the Unterberg.

Roderic, the last of the Goths, has been laid hold of by legend and by poetry. Southey wrote his poem on the theme, and Scott his "Vision of Don Roderic," an odd blunder in the title, as _don_ was not used prior to the ninth century. Roderic ascended the throne of the Goths in Spain in 709. According to the legend he seduced the daughter of Julian, Count of the Gothic possessions in Africa. She complained to her father, and he in revenge invited the Moors, whom he had hitherto valiantly opposed, to aid him in casting Roderic from his throne, the issue of which was the defeat and death of Roderic, and the occupation of nearly the whole peninsula by the Moors. At Toledo is a cave with a tower at its entrance formerly dedicated to Hercules, and tradition said that he who entered would learn the future fate of Spain. The cave still exists. The entrance lies near San Ginos; it was opened in 1546 by Archbishop Siliceo, but has never since, according to Forbes, been properly investigated. The story went that in spite of the entreaties of the prelate and some of his great men, Roderic burst open the iron door, and descended into the cave, where he found a bronze statue with a battle-axe in its hands. With this it struck the floor repeatedly, making the hall reverberate with the sound of the blows. Then Roderic read on the wall the inscription, "Unfortunate king, thou hast entered here in evil hour." On the right side of the wall were the words, "By strange nations thou shalt be dispossessed and thy subjects departed." On the shoulders of the statue were written the words, "I summon the Arabs," and on its breast, "I do mine office." The king left the cave sorrowful, and the same night an earthquake wrecked the tower and buried the entrance to the cave.

Evidently Shakespeare had this story in his mind when he wrote the scene of the descent of Macbeth into the cave of Hekate.

Although the oracles had ceased to speak in the pagan temples and caves, yet the desire remained to question the spirits and to inquire into the future, and for this purpose throughout the Middle Ages either wizards were had recourse to that a look might be taken in their magic mirrors, or else the churches were resorted to and the sacred text received as the response of God to some question put by the inquirer. When Chramm revolted against his father Clothair, he approached Dijon, when, says Gregory of Tours, the priests of the cathedral having placed three books on the altar, to wit the Prophets, the Acts of the Apostles, and the Gospels, they prayed God to announce to them what would befall Chramm, and by His power reveal whether he would be successful and come to the throne, and they received the reply as each opened the book.

Gregory also says that Meroveus, flying before the wrath of his father Chilperic, placed three books on the tomb of S. Martin at Tours, the Psalter, the Book of Kings, and the Gospels; he kept vigil all night, and passed three days fasting. But when he opened the books at random, the responses were so alarming that he despaired, and left the sepulchre in tears. [Footnote: For many more instances see Lalanne (L.), _Curiosites des Traditions_, Paris, 1847.]

The councils sought to put an end to this superstition. The sixteenth canon of the Council of Vannes, held in 465, forbade clerks, under pain of excommunication, to consult these _sortes sacrae_, as they were called. This prohibition was extended to the laity by the Council of Agde in 506, and by that of Orleans in 511. It was renewed repeatedly, as, for instance, in the Council of Auxerre in 595, by a capitulary of Charlemagne in 789, and by the Council of Selingstadt in 1022, but always in vain. If inquirers might not seek for answers in the churches, at the tombs of the Saints, they would seek them in the dens of necromancers. In spite of this condemnation, consultation of the divine oracles even formed a portion of the liturgy; and at the consecration of a bishop, at the moment when the Book of the Gospels was placed on his head, the volume was opened, and the first verse at the head of the page was regarded as a prognostication of the character of his episcopate. There are numerous accounts of such presages in the chronicles. Guibert of Nogent relates, for instance, that when Landric, elected Bishop of Noyon, was receiving episcopal unction, the text of the Gospel foreshadowed evil--"A sword shall pierce through thine own soul also." After having committed several crimes, he was assassinated. He had, as his successor, the Dean of Orleans; the new bishop on being presented for consecration, there was sought, in the Gospel, for a prognostication concerning him, but the page proved a blank. It was as though God had said, "With regard to this man I have nothing to say." And in fact he died a few months later.

The same usage was practised in the Greek Church. At the consecration of Athanasius, nominated to the patriarchate of Constantinople by Constantine Porphyrogenetos, "Caracalla, Bishop of Nicomedia, having brought forward the Gospel," says the Byzantine historian Pachymeros, "the people were alert to learn the oracle of the opening of the volume. The Bishop of Nicomedia having perceived that the leading words were 'prepared for the devil and his angels,' groaned in his heart, and covering the passage with his hand, turned the leaves and opened at these words, 'and the birds of the air lodged in the branches of it,' which seemed to have no connection with the ceremony. All that could be was done to conceal the oracles, but it was found impossible to cover up