know not from whence the Monks introduced it; probably they were ignorant enough to have invented the obvious fiction. A In the Vision of Thurcillus, the ceremony is accurately described. "At the end of the north wall, within the church, sate St. Paul, and opposite him, without, was the devil and his angels. At the feet of the devil, a burning pit flamed up, which was the mouth of the pit of hell. balance, equally poised, was fixed upon the wall, between the devil and the apostle, one scale hanging before each. The apostle had two weights, a greater and a less, all shining, and like gold, and the devil also had two smoky and black ones. Therefore, the souls that were all black, came one after another, with great fear and trembling, to behold the weighing of their good and evil works; for these weights weighed the works of all the souls, according to the good or evil which they had done. When the scale inclined to the apostle, he took the soul, and introduced it through the eastern gate, into the fire of Purgatory, that there it might expiate its crimes. when the scale inclined and sunk towards the devil, then he and his angels snatched the soul, miserably howling and cursing the father and mother that begot it to eternal torments, and cast it with laughter and grinning into the deep and fiery pit which was at the feet of the devil. Of this balance of good and evil, much may be found in the writings of the Holy Fathers.". Matthew Paris. But "Concerning the salvation of Charlemagne, Archbishop Turpin, a man of holy life, wrote thus: "I, Turpin, Archbishop of Rheims, being in my chamber, in the city of Vienna, saying my prayers, saw a legion of devils in the air, who were making a great noise. I adjured one of them to tell me from whence they came, and wherefore they made so great an uproar. And he re plied that they came from Aix la Chapelle, where a great lord had died, and that they were returning in anger, because they had not been able to carry away his soul. I asked him who the great lord was, and why they had not been able to carry away his soul? He replied, That it was Charlemagne, and that Santiago had been greatly against them. And I asked him how Santiago had been against them; and he replied, We were weighing the good and the evil which he had done in this world, and Santiago brought so much timber, and so many stones from the churches which he had founded in his name, that they greatly over-balanced all his evil works; and so we had no power over his soul. And having said this, the devil disappeared." We must understand from this vision of Archbishop Turpin, that they who build or repair churches in this world, erect resting places and inns for their salvation. Historia do Imperador Carlos Magno, et dos Doze The Two other corollaries follow from the vision. devil's way home from Aix la Chapelle lay through Vienna; and as churches go by weight, an architect of Sir John Vanbrugh's school should always be employed. This balance of the dead was an easy and apt metaphor, but clumsily imagined as an actual mode of trial. "For take thy ballaunce, if thou be so wise, "And weigh the winde that under heaven doth blow; "Or weigh the light that in the east doth rise : "Or weigh the thought that from man's mind doth flow: "But if the weight of these thou canst not show, "Weigh but one word which from thy lips doth fall." Spenser. And Azrael, from the hands of Thalaba, &c.— P. 201. This double meaning is in the spirit of oracular prediction. The classical reader will remember the equivocations of Apollo. The fable of the Young Man and the Lion in the Tapestry will be more generally recollected. We have many buildings in England to which this story has been applied. Cooke's Folly, near Bristol, derives its name from a similar tradition. The History of the Buccaneers affords a remarkable instance of prophecy occasioning its own accomplish ment. "Before my first going over into the South-Seas with Captain Sharp (and indeed before any privateers, at least since Drake and Orengham) had gone that way which we afterwards went, except La Sound, a French captain, who, by captain Wright's instructions, had ventured as far as Cheapo town with a body of men, but was driven back again; I being then on board Captain Coron, in company with three or four more privateers, about four leagues to the east of Portobel, we took the packets bound thither from Carthagena. We opened a great quantity of the merchants' letters, and found the contents of many of them to be very surprising; the merchants of several parts of Old-Spain thereby informing their correspondents of Panama, and elsewhere, of a certain prophecy that went about Spain that year, the tenor of which was, that there would be English privateers that year in the West Indies, who would make such great discoveries, as to open a door into the South-Seas, which they supposed was fastest shut; and the letters were accordingly full of cautions to their friends to be very watchful and careful of their coasts. This door they spake of, we all concluded must be the passage over-land through the country of the Indians of Darien, who were a little before this become our friends, and had lately fallen out with the Spaniards, breaking off the intercourse which for some time they had with them. And upon calling also to mind the frequent invitations we had from those Indians a little before this time, to pass through their country, and fall upon the Spaniards in the South-Seas, we from henceforward began to entertain such thoughts in earnest, and soon came to a resolution to make those attempts which we afterwards did with Captains Sharp, Coxon, &c. So that the taking these letters gave the first life to those bold undertakings; and we took the advantage of the fears the Spaniards were in from that prophecy, or probable conjecture, or whatever it were; for we sealed up most of the letters again, and sent them ashore to Portobel. Dampier. |