A locust swarm could mean one of two things. The insects might be the work of godless nature or even the devil. If plowing and planting were noble labor, even a higher calling, then the locusts could be seen as the diabolical work of Satan. In this case, calling upon the Church to deliver a searing curse might be just the thing to drive them away. On the other hand, the creatures could be emissaries of God sent to punish the people for their sins. If the farmers had wandered from the straight and narrow, then the locusts could be viewed as the servants of an angry God. In this case, the proper response would be humility and repentance to placate the angry deity, who might then send the swarm on its way. The last thing a cleric wanted to do was to pronounce an anathema on the Lord’s messengers. So, how could the Church know whether a locust swarm originated demonically or divinely?
On St. Bartholomew’s Day in 1338, locusts began to decimate the farming region around Botzen in the Tyrol of modern-day Austria. To determine the proper course of events—repentance or curse—the church convened a trial of the insects before the ecclesiastical court at Kaltern. The trial followed what had become a standard sequence of events. First came a petition from those seeking redress. If the petition was accepted, the proceedings next involved a declaration or plea on behalf of the inhabitants. This was a flowery speech concerning the horrors of hunger with loads of classic citations, historical allusions, irrelevant digressions, and literary discourses. The meandering series of accusations was followed by the defense’s allegation or plea for the insects. As the locusts could not speak for themselves, they were given legal counsel, who was no less officious in his rejoinder.
These phases were followed by the presentation of substantive arguments for and against the locusts. The defense invoked the entomological equivalent of the modern insanity plea to contend that the locusts lacked reason and volition and were thus immune from condemnation. After all, the insects were simply exercising their innate and God-given rights to swarm and feed. The prosecution rebutted this claim by acknowledging that the law cannot punish the irrational or insane for crimes already committed but pointed out that it can intervene to prevent further harm. So, the anathema should not be seen as punishing the locusts but as a means of driving them away before they did more damage. Then, the prosecutor played theological hardball, noting that Jesus cursed the fig tree, an entirely irrational organism—and was it the defense counsel’s intention to question the Son of God’s judgment?
As things started looking bad for the locusts, their counsel resorted to the ecclesiastical version of the “race card” in the O. J. Simpson trial. He proposed that his clients were actually agents sent by the Almighty to punish the farmers for their sinful ways—and to curse these messengers would be to fight against God himself. But the prosecution was unshakable. With righteous indignation he asserted that the pious and near-saintly villagers were God’s people and the insects were surely diabolical. Indeed, for the besieged people to appeal to the Church for assistance was an act of authentic religiosity and abiding faith, not resistance to God.
The resolution of the trial was up to the bishop’s proctor, with a sentence pronounced solemnly in Latin by the ecclesiastical judge. In the Kaltern court, the proctor began by expressing his serious reservations that a misfired curse would become a boomerang, “being a weapon of such peculiar energy and activity that, if it fails to strike the object against which it is hurled, it returns to smite him, who hurled it.” Then, perhaps to provide himself with an alibi if the Almighty cross-examined him on Judgment Day, he claimed to be muddled by the complexity of the case, saying, “We cannot tell why God has sent these animals to devour the fruits of the earth; this is for us a sealed book.” The official next pontificated on what sins might have induced such a plague, which seemed to suggest that the judgment would be in favor of the insects. However, in the end he set aside these arguments and ordered the swarm to vacate the countryside within six days or else suffer anathematization. The proctor’s declaration included one final recommendation aimed at the petitioners.
The court strongly suggested that the farmers avail themselves of prayers and penances. The former were left to the congregants’ discretion, but the latter were clearly specified. As was customary, the plaintiffs were instructed to manifest their penance in the form of tithes to the Church. It was widely known—although it bore repeating by the proctor—that abstinence from sin and payment of tithes, particularly the latter, enhanced the efficacy of anathema. In fact, the province had the option of shortcutting the legal system entirely and purchasing an anathema directly from the pope. But an end run of the ecclesiastical courts via the Vatican was not cheap. Although Kaltern was an affluent market town, famous for its wines, and lying just ten miles south of the locust infestation, the Botzen villagers were rather less wealthy, and so they settled on simply putting the locusts on trial. The procedural delay was problematical, what with the locusts busily chomping on their crops while the court’s officers pontificated. But the outcome of the trial was not in jeopardy, as there don’t appear to have been any cases that went the locusts’ way. And between the legal delays and the judge’s verdict—their relative contributions being left to the reader’s interpretation of biology and theology—the locusts left the region not long after the trial concluded.
GOD’S SERVANTS OR GREEN IMPS OF SATAN?
The possibility that the Rocky Mountain locusts were God-sent was implicit in the most common biblical allusions used by the settlers in their letters and journals. These God-fearing people often made reference to the plagues of Egypt, although it was not always clear whether this was a theological analogy or literary device, as seen in this vivid recollection of a Nebraska homesteader:The summer of ’74 was blessed with an abundance of rain and warm weather. Corn grew rank and was surprisingly forward for the season of the year. The small grain too gave promise of exceptional yield. Farmers in the Valley were beginning to make preparations for harvesting and housing the crop which should at once place them in easy circumstances, when a calamity as complete as it was unexpected with one fell stroke destroyed all their calculations and for a time left them stunned and almost broken in spirit. It came in the shape of one of the plagues of ancient Egypt. . . . They move not so much in sheets as in great columns from one to five thousand feet thick, resembling great fleecy clouds propelled onward by some strong but hidden agency.
A Minnesota homesteader, on seeing the whirling, glittering cloud of insects descending on her family’s farm, sank to her knees and wailed, “The locusts! God help us!” We have to wonder whether she was appealing to the Almighty for deliverance from his wrath or from evil. And remember Richard Chalmers, the character in Gentleman from England, who was unable to fathom the tales he’d been hearing of the locusts? Well, seeing is believing, and Annette Atkins recounts, “Watching the creatures at work, Chalmers remembered a Bible passage: ‘The land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness.’ At last he believed.” But, we might ask, what exactly did Chalmers come to believe?
According to a historical review of locust outbreaks in Missouri by George Jones, the settlers looked upon swarms as punishment for some moral shortcoming or evildoing. The biblical allusions by the settlers were not merely literary ploys; they were direct parallels to the Old Testament—and God was angry. This interpretation of the locust plagues was evinced in sermons to the people and in discussions among the clergy. A letter from Reverend August Kenter to Reverend J. H. Sieker in 1874 begins with some compassionate ambiguity as to God’s intention in having sent a swarm of locusts into his Minnesota community:Dear Brother,
On the 12th of June I arrived, thanks to God, in good health and spirits and renewed vigor, at my dear home and found wife and children well. But what a destruction! had the army of God completed meanwhile. Nothing remained of my forty acre wheat field. . . . At the commencement, it seemed as if God in his infinite grace would make an exception with some; but visiting my congregations a
few days afterwards, to look after families, of whom I expected that they were suffering; I found enough of them, who had no bread and I divided what I had on hand amongst 12 families to whom it came like a Godsend.
The reverend portrayed himself as a compassionate shepherd, providing for his congregants. And although he leaves little doubt as to the locusts having been sent by the Almighty, we might suppose that this disaster was simply a trial of the people’s faith. Maybe God was testing his flock, as he had done with Job. But the rest of Reverend Kenter’s angst-filled letter, although failing to explain what sins warranted such cosmic retribution, leaves no doubt that this disaster was a divine punishment:But the dear Lord did not want to make any exceptions . . . we at once saw our hopes destroyed, for the Lord ordered them to swallow up also the few fields in our neighborhood, which had been spared up to this time. . . . So has the Lord overlooked not one in his punishment. . . . All the 60 families in my two congregations, of whom the greater part are here, 1-2 & 3 years, without means, yea many of them who came here poor with many little children have not had one harvest yet, but have made their living by working for others.
If the locust invasions were deserved by those who suffered from the consequent hunger and poverty, then the social reaction to the besieged farmers was at least largely consistent. The victims were widely viewed as impoverished mendicants, whose situation—even if not a result of having angered God—was evidence of a sinful lack of character.
The less widely held theological interpretation of the locust invasions was that the swarms were of demonic origin. Perhaps the most impassioned case for this view came from a Minnesota pioneer who lamented, “The Lord only knows which harmed the poor settlers more, the prowling Red-skins who were wont to sally forth from the hills and uplands or the green imps of satan the grasshoppers, which pounced upon us in bewildering hordes—both literally took the bread out of our mouths.” In this view, the godless natives along with the locusts (and presumably the wolves and other creatures that menaced the settlers) were all part of a diabolical plot. The wilderness was often perceived as a dark and foreboding place, so it was sensible to assert that the swarms were an outpouring of evil from this depraved land. The homesteader was something of an agrarian missionary, converting the heathen wilderness into an orderly garden. If the homesteaders lost their land to the locusts, then they were simply unfortunate victims of satanic forces.
This religious view was consistent with the social interpretation of the locust-besieged settlers as deserving of assistance. These bedraggled farmers were victims of evildoers, as opposed to the unworthy poor who parasitized the hardworking sectors of American society. After all, the poor, hungry settlers were the salt of the earth, yeoman farmers building the nation from the ground up. The locusts had destroyed their crops but not their virtue. Such an appeal was made on behalf of the Kansas homesteaders:With emphasis we assert, that our suffering people are not wanting in enterprise nor courage, nor in any of the elements of true manhood. The uncomplaining patience with which even women and children are enduring the misfortunes that have fallen upon them, is nothing short of heroic. Our people have not lost faith in themselves, nor in the resources and prospects of the State in which they live, nor in Him without whom not a sparrow falls to the ground.
But during the peak of the locust outbreaks in the 1870s, the nation was in the grip of an economic depression. There was plenty of suffering concentrated in the cities, so there was not much sympathy to spare for the scattered farmers. Factories were fast replacing farms as the financial heart and cultural soul of the growing nation. Moreover, the homesteaders had already been offered free land: How much more public largess could they expect? The hardships of the frontier—including blizzards, droughts, loneliness, Indians, and locusts—were viewed as “part of the deal.” But if providing physical assistance was a matter of intense debate and social reluctance, spiritual aid was rather less costly and somewhat more graciously given.
CHURCH AND STATE
Whether deserved or gratuitous, divine or demonic, the locust outbreaks required some response from religious leaders. The churches played a very limited role in providing physical aid, although it should be said that their capacity in this regard was rather nominal. Moreover, a tough-love minister might rationalize that withholding material handouts would foster moral growth, self-reliance, and responsibility—but refusing to offer prayers was beyond even the most harshly judgmental preachers. So religious leaders attempted to intercede with God on behalf of the suffering farmers.
For the most part, the clergy walked the careful line that had been drawn six centuries earlier based on the contention of Thomas Aquinas that animals, including locusts, were not culpable for their misdeeds. From here, Christian orthodoxy had eventually come to the standard position that the proper response to a troublesome swarm was to call upon the populace to repent and humbly entreat an angry God to remove the scourge. Although there are few records of what was said in church services about the Rocky Mountain locust, the prayers offered by state officials likely reflect the cautiously compassionate tone of the religious leaders.
Under pressure from the churches, Missouri’s governor was the first to seize on the political and theological advantages of a call for public prayer on behalf of the farmers. He managed to allude to the locusts without specifically mentioning these creatures. Perhaps the seeming absurdity of setting aside a day of prayer concerning an insect outbreak was deemed inconsistent with the dignity of the governor’s office. And so, in May of 1875, Charles H. Hardin somewhat obliquely proclaimed:Whereas, owing to the failure and losses of our crops much suffering has been endured by many . . . and if not abated will eventuate in sore distress and famine; Wherefore be it known that the 3rd day of June proximo is hereby appointed and set apart as a day of fasting and prayer that Almighty God may be invoked to remove from our midst those impending calamities and to grant instead the blessings of abundance and plenty; and the people and all the officers of the state are hereby requested to desist during that day, from their usual employments, and to assemble at their places of worship for humble and devout prayer, and to otherwise observe the day as one of fasting and prayer.
Many years later, Leland Ossian Howard, the fourth chief entomologist to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, revealed that the timing of Hardin’s “day of fasting and prayer” was not arbitrarily chosen. Rather, the governor had consulted with the state entomologist, who advised Hardin that the locusts would begin to fly from the infested regions in early June. So Hardin’s timing for an appeal to divine intervention was rather more ecologically sophisticated and politically cynical than the merely fortuitous delays of the ecclesiastical courts in earlier centuries. And this locust prosecution didn’t have the grinding officiousness of an ecclesiastical trial. Whether through the power of science or that of religion, within a few days of the time dedicated to prayer the swarms departed. Not since Saint Magnus, Abbot of Füssen (Germany), repulsed a locust swarm using the staff of Saint Columba in 666 had the Church been able to lay claim to such stunning and immediate entomological efficacy. And just as locusts bred more locusts, the people hoped that success—even if miraculous—might breed further success.
Following the locust invasions of 1876, various groups had pressured the governor of Minnesota to issue an official call for a day of prayer. In March 1877, churches turned up the political and theological heat. Urgent requests poured into the capital from religious leaders across the afflicted counties. Some took matters into their own hands: Catholics near Cold Springs pledged to offer prayers to the Blessed Virgin for fifteen years and to construct a chapel in her honor if she would intervene with the Almighty to lift the scourge. A few pragmatic petitioners advocated that the governor declare a “day of work,” with the attendant wages going to alleviate the suffering of the farmers left destitute by the locusts. But demands for spiritual supplication were more common and conventional—and, in politically pragmatic terms, more like
ly to be accepted by the citizens. Offering up prayers was one thing—giving up wages was quite another.
Minnesota’s governor John S. Pillsbury declared April 26, 1877, as “a day of fasting, humiliation and prayer” to deliver the people from the locusts and to comfort the afflicted. On the appointed day, Pillsbury closed his own flour mills in Minneapolis, perhaps to avoid the appearance of hypocrisy or to attract the attention of the national press, which enthusiastically covered the day’s events. However, not everyone was happy with the governor’s unusual merger of church and state. The Liberal League publicly denounced their government’s plea for divine intervention, stating, “We hold that this belief in the power of prayer is palpably untrue, its influence pernicious and in this day a marked discredit to the intelligence of Minnesotans.”
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