THE POOR OF CHRIST
Martin and Pierre ran as speedily as they could, dodging the pervasive moonlight for the safety of the shadows. An uninvited mist that might stir worry in other travelers would be welcome to them, a natural veil to cover their path. Not far behind them a party of heresy hunters tracked their every move.
Martin and Pierre were Waldensian barbes—itinerant heretical preacher-healers traveling in the dark of night, spreading their gospel, giving alms and healing the sick, and holding clandestine meetings, called synagogues,*23 which were annual affairs that took place in the home of a rural Waldensian.17 Potential barbes would “go out into the world” as apprentices with senior members of the group. Once the trainee had proved his worth, he was
presented to the grand master, who, having consulted with the other barbes, if they are deemed capable, will give them the power to hear confession, preach and absolve: having obtained permission for this authority, the master drinks first, then he offers drink to the new barbe, and the other barbes in succession drink too, and then they feast, eating and drinking.18
Eventually captured, Martin and Pierre were questioned about the proceedings that took place at their synagogues. The Waldensian barbes had worked out a system of secrecy: they traveled only by night, stayed briefly in each village visited, changed residence every two years, and mastered professions that would require one to travel without raising suspicions.19
We can guess endlessly at the spirit that must have overwhelmed such a wealthy and successful merchant as Peter Waldo of Lyon (ca. 1140– 1220), who did what his family, friends, and business partners could not have imagined possible: he followed Jesus’s words in Matthew 19:21 precisely: “If thou wouldst be perfect, go, sell that thou hast, and give to the poor.” A seasoned salesman who had made a fortune through “wicked usury,” Waldo now believed that “no man can serve two masters, God and [greed].” He asked his wife—undoubtedly surprised to hear of her unprecedented divorce—whether she wanted to inherit all of his real estate or all of his belongings; not feeling much personal affection for his personal effects, she chose the former. After that, all his possessions were divided among “those he had treated unjustly,” an act of restitution for a lifetime of shady dealings. Given to beggary, Waldo now preached a message of material abandonment in the present for heavenly delights in the hereafter.20
As in his secular career, Waldo was successful in his religious career, quickly gaining a following of those who also gave up all their possessions to care for the poor. Before too long a small group of these “Poor of Christ,” as they referred to themselves (“Waldensians” to their critics), could be found around Lyon preaching. Confident in their pious movement a small band of the Poor attended the Lateran Council of Rome in 1179. While at the council they were equally praised for their faithfulness as they were chastised for their unauthorized preaching. They were allowed to continue their almsgiving so long as they stopped holding public sermons. The censure proved fruitless; the Poor continued to proselytize and by 1184 their disobedience earned them denunciation as heretics. From the twelfth through the fifteenth centuries Waldensians were viciously rooted out and neutralized throughout the Franco-German countryside, but to no avail. Something about their devotion to the literal word of the Bible—a concept the established church had already discarded—along with the rebellious life they lived, made the Waldensians popular with common folk.21
Due to the persistence with which the Waldensians fought to survive and the equal vigor with which they were hunted, we have numerous surviving documents written both by them and about them.22 These documents paint a picture of a typical annual synagogue, the kind of which barbes traveled to perform around the late fifteenth century: “[We] preach by night . . . hold reunions and synagogues during which [we] preach to begin with,” the barbe Martin told his inquisitor. After offering an initial sermon the heretics “start[ed] the festivities, amusements and dances.” The participants ran around the room in a frenzy until the lone luminous lamp in the room was doused. At that moment, those who were closest at hand “consummate[d] sin of the flesh.” Those children born of this congress would “be more apt than any other to exercise the office of barbe.” According to the record, the barbe Pierre said this practice derived from “the habit of adoring a certain idol called Bacchus and Baron and also the Sibyl and the fairies.”23 This latter Bacchanalian detail, with associations that Martin himself didn’t even hint at, presents a small problem: we don’t know whether it was inserted into the record by the inquisitor or represents some kind of irregular folkloric component that seeped into the beliefs and practices of some of the more isolated Waldensian congregations—a variant that was the result of remoteness.24 If, however, it is just an inquisitor’s exaggeration, why is it absent from Martin’s confession? Would it not have been inserted there too for consistency?
While they differ on some of the specifics, the testimonies of Martin and Pierre, and those from other Waldensians, demonstrate that there might have been some truth to some of the stories about the sexual activities of the members.25 Though the notion is generally rejected by mainstream modern historians, one such scholar has postulated that such carnal unions might have not only been possible but they may have been key to the sect’s impressive survival.26 Indeed, the subject of their peculiar sexual activities comes up about twenty times in a collection of hundreds of interrogations—too few for the idea to have been imposed on a prisoner by an inquisitor, and yet too many times for it not to pique our interest. We must keep in mind that the sexual taboos of the time—especially when accused heretics spoke with clergymen—might have halted any mention of it by the person under interrogation. It is possible that of the larger Waldensian majority there existed minority variations that couldn’t help but wed their folk ideas to this bastard Christian faith. For example, in some instances Waldensians appear as the epitome of celibate righteousness; other times, when speaking of sexual congress in general, Waldensian heretics affirmed that sexual license was among the less severe of sins.27
One noted anthropologist and folklorist has surmised that such feast and sex rites might portray cultural ruins from a time before sexual taboos existed in the polite Western mind. Coitus was “the exact equivalent of the communal meal. . . . All the men are united with all the women, so that union between members of the society . . . might be profound and complete.”28 In short the sex rites of one particular Waldensian subsect and the ancient orgiastic stereotype that arose around the first centuries CE could be nothing more than mere historical coincidence. Further rumors of Waldensian preachers lusting after women didn’t help the matter: in 1265, almost a century after the Waldensians had both formed and been chastised, the preacher David of Augsburg disabused anyone of the notion that Waldensian heretics engaged in nocturnal orgies, explaining that while a few Waldensian vicars certainly had coital affairs, this did not speak for the group.29
There is another possibility. Maybe, just maybe, some heretics over these long stretches of time came to regard the initial slanders by pagans against Christians as authentic. Perhaps they based their sexual rites, should such rites have existed, on activities that they thought had occurred, founded on misapprehensions of ancient aspersions. It is a stretch, obviously, and cannot be ruminated on here at length. After all, we seek the witches’ ointment, whose origin probably rests in some “poison”—i.e., a hallucinogen—that had little to do with the sexual exploits of certain persons deemed heretics. It may, however, have had to do with some of the substances used in antiquity by magicians, some of them founders of heretical sects.*24
GNOSTIC SORCERY
The color patterns danced before the eyes of the young woman, yellows bleeding into oranges, then into reds and purples, creating visions of fires swaying across the walls of Marcus’s home. Her mind might have wandered into a vast cosmos inhabited by goddesses and gods, wherein the infinite touched her fingertips; or she might have slipped into an asinine inebriation
, wherein she simply laughed and babbled incoherently at the basest of gestures. Either way, she was awed and amused at once. Marcus couldn’t have chosen a better victim than the stupefied beauty before him. Young, attractive, and most important, wealthy, she was also now thoroughly under the influence of one of his magical love philters. Intrigued by Marcus’s promises she had taken the potion at his insistence so as to better enjoy the wonders performed by him. The room spun, she felt elated, felt the magic stir within her.
Marcus, the second-century founder of the Marcosian gnostic sect, initiated yet another follower.
Knowing the insatiable vanity that permeates avaricious souls, Marcus sought out people, especially women, who would promise him their fortunes in exchange for not only his prophecies, but also his ability to bestow the gift of prophecy. His method was simple: he would whip his inductees into an ecstatic frenzy with simple parlor tricks and then tell them, “Open your mouth, speak whatsoever occurs to you, and you shall prophesy.” Feeling “elated by these words, and greatly excited in soul by the expectation [of] prophecy, [the victim] impudently utters some nonsense as it happens to occur to her.” After this, the women would be so overwhelmed with their new abilities that each offered her body to him. If that didn’t work, Marcus always had his “philters and love potions,” which he used to “insult [the prey’s] person” (i.e., dose them with a drug and have sex with them).
But this report of Marcus and his love potions comes from a hostile source, Lyonese bishop Irenaeus, who sought to ruin Marcus’s character. We should therefore be cautious in our assessment of this gnostic magician. To someone like Irenaeus all such magical practices were not only illegal but also immoral—meaning we can’t be certain how Marcus really used his potions. It is possible that he and his followers took their philters consensually—a shared magical experience that Irenaeus recorded in only the basest of terms to indicate that Marcus had only the most ignoble intentions. In the eyes of the Church Fathers, Marcus was not a divine man; he was simply a magician who was corrupting Christianity with both his gnostic views and his sorcery.30
While we cannot say for sure exactly how Marcus’s potions played into his personal beliefs, we can be assured that he at least knew about the properties of some powerful hallucinogens (such as those outlined in Sulla’s Law), the kind that epitomized the “criminal magic” discussed in chapter 1 of this book. It must also be recognized that as a gnostic, Marcus’s beliefs derived not from apostolic lineage but from direct experience.31 It is therefore not so impossible that he might have interpreted the ingestion of his potions as providing visionary or otherwise psyche-magical experiences. As recent scholarship has revealed, certain gnostic texts like Round Dance of the Cross and Thunder, PerfectMind infuriated the proto-orthodox precisely because these belief systems admitted that their authority rested on individuals’ personal experiences of the divine. This was one of the very things Irenaeus complained about: “Every one of them generates something new every day . . . for no one is considered initiated . . . unless he develops some erroneous fictions!”32
Church Fathers like Irenaeus and Epiphanius also condemned the sorcery of the infamous Samaritan magician Simon Magus as a perversion of orthodoxy. Simon was Christianity’s first identified heretic,33 and enters the historical record via the Bible.*25 In the account given in Acts 8:9–24 Simon had been practicing magic in Samaria, “driving the people . . . out of their wits.” The writer doesn’t specify exactly how Simon enchanted the minds of those around him other than alleging it was through “magic arts.”
Some time later, Church Fathers confirmed Simon’s activities as sorcery as it was understood around the fourth and fifth centuries CE. Church theologian Theodoret of Cyrus (ca. 390–450 CE) held Simon guilty of all the wiles of magic including the use of “[l]ove philters.”34 Epiphanius (ca. 320–400 CE) is more revealing in his treatment of how these magic potions were used to persuade people: “[Simon,] pretending that he was mixing hellebore with honey . . . added a poison for those whom he hunted into his mischievous illusion under the cloak of the name of Christ, and compassed the death of those who believed.”†26 35 In other words the proto-orthodox believed that Simon was drugging his converts in an effort to draw them to become his followers. We can be sure that Epiphanius wasn’t referring to literal death but rather was writing metaphorically about the loss of the True Way on the part of Simon’s pupils. For one thing, from a purely pragmatic perspective, a would-be religious leader like Simon would have much explaining to do to new devotees if his earlier followers had all died at his initiation ceremonies; and second, Epiphanius goes on to write that Simon “fabricated a corrupt allegory for those whom he had deceived.” Certainly if those allegedly poisoned by Simon’s magical drugs had died there would be little reason to construct allegories to further indoctrinate them.
Alas, the Samaritan citizens, so swayed by Simon’s substances, suddenly sought salvation through baptism administered by Philip the Evangelist (ca. late first century CE)—the very man who baptized Simon (Acts 8:13)! It didn’t take long for stories of Samaritans receiving the Word of God through Philip to reach Jerusalem, after which the apostles Peter and John left that city to investigate. What they found was not a nation that had received the Holy Spirit but Samaritans who had merely been baptized, for Philip was just a deacon and could not grant the gift of the Holy Spirit.36 Feeling the need to present the true Holy Spirit to the people, the two apostles “laid their hands on [the Samaritans]” and thus bestowed the gift that a mere deacon could not.
Simon Magus, enchanted by the apostles’ ability to bestow the Holy Spirit with a mere touch,*27 offered them silver so as to learn their trick—a request at which John and Peter took much offense, as their power derived not from any fakery or mere magic but from the power of the One True God. According to the apocryphal Acts of Peter (Acts 8:9–24), Simon would later die while trying to outdo Peter in a kind of magicians’ duel. Apparently Simon was performing magic in the Forum and in order to prove himself to be a god he levitated up into the air. The apostle Peter prayed to God to stop his flying, and he stopped mid-air and fell into a place called the Sacra Via (meaning “Holy Way”), breaking his legs “in three parts.” He supposedly died from his injuries.
The stories of both the historical Marcus and the literary Simon as recorded by the Church Fathers do not shed light on if and how their magical potions were related to their spiritual beliefs. Considered tools of a magician, they were criminalized (and therefore bastardized) by both secular pagan and orthodox Christian authorities even if they weren’t necessarily used for malefic purposes. Even some pagan writers deplored magic; second-century Greek philosopher Celsus, a fervent anti-Christian, viewed Jesus as nothing more than a magician.37 It is therefore not so surprising that in the first centuries CE, magicians like Marcus would be attracted to someone like Jesus.
Sometimes the proto-orthodox condemned the veneficia of not just individual heretics but of entire sects. The Carpocrates, an early gnostic sect from the first half of the second century CE, were said to employ magical potions. We can imagine they used them in one of the following two ways: to dazzle prospective followers or to ingest for divinatory or necromantic reasons, as some ancient spells suggest.38 One group with roots stretching back to antiquity that certainly employed drugs for this latter reason still existed as late as the 1880s. Tucked away in the northern region of the Caucasus Mountains the curious explorer will find the Ossetians, a group with Iranian origins whose beliefs have been called “a bizarre mixture of Christianity and ancient superstition.” They worshipped the Hebrew prophet Elijah, sacrificed goats to him, ate the meat, skinned the carcasses, and placed the fleeces under a tree. They then prayed to Elijah to bestow an abundant harvest on them. They also prophesied by intoxicating themselves with smoke from burning the highly psychoactive rhododendron bush, falling into a deep sleep, and interpreting the lucid dreams that followed as real events.39
Another reason to ta
ke intoxicants during ritual practices was for pain relief. Saint Maximus of Turin (ca. 380–465) wrote emphatically against such practices found within the cult of Diana (her followers were called “Dianaticus”). The priests of Diana would drink much wine in preparation for some kind of self-flagellation rite. These people were easy to spot, Maximus wrote wryly, as they would be “suffering a hangover” the next morning. “They do this not only from intemperance,” claimed Maximus, “but also according to plan, so that they may be less troubled by their wounds on succumbing to the drunkennes of wine.” He compares these individuals to “sooth-sayers.”40
Those labeled “heretics” were ordinary people from all walks of life. They could be your neighbors, business partners, family members, or friends. They were, in short, more than just deviants from protoorthodox beliefs; they were humans—flawed, desirous, ignorant, rationalizing a world they wanted, not the world they had inherited. Some of the heretical leaders gained followers by setting an example of piety; others attracted disciples by more nefarious methods, through deception and trickery, and in still other cases maybe by sharing some kind of psyche-magical rite via love philters. While none of the Church Fathers record any heretical beliefs that involved taking drugs as a sacrament—a practice found in other parts of the world—such toxins were employed throughout history by people for various magical reasons.
But the view of magic as an illegal enterprise would soon begin to change. Church Fathers like Augustine, Maximus of Turin, and others would lead the charge, debating magic from a theological perspective instead of a criminal one.41 Magic, in the eyes of the budding church, started to shift into a status it had never occupied before: it became heresy. ‘Twas a slow conversion spanning centuries, as the religious elite was more preoccupied with organizing the Goliath that the church would soon become than fending off magic and superstitious beliefs. A most sinister transition would materialize along this road: those same slanders that pagans had once cast on Christians would be coopted by Church Fathers and applied to any and all groups that the orthodox decried.
The Witches' Ointment Page 7