The epidemics of the middle ages / From the German of J.F.C. Hecker ; translated by B.G. Babington.

  • Hecker, J. F. C. (Justus Friedrich Carl), 1795-1850.
Date:
1846
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The epidemics of the middle ages / From the German of J.F.C. Hecker ; translated by B.G. Babington. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    quence, pursued with merciless cruelty; and either indis- criminately given up to the fury of the populace, or sentenced by sanguinary tribunals, which, with all the forms of law, ordered them to be burnt alive. In times like these, much is indeed said of guilt and innocence ; but hatred and revenge bear down all discrimination, and the smallest probability, magnifies suspicion into certainty. These bloody scenes, which disgraced Europe in the 14th century, are a counterpart to a similar mania of the age, which was manifested in the persecu- tions of witches and sorcerers; and, like these they prove, that enthusiasm, associated with hatred, and leagued with the baser passions, may work more powerfully upon whole nations, than religion and legal order; nay, that it even knows how to profit by the authority of both, in order the more surely to satiate with blood, the sword of long suppi-essed revenge. The persecution of the Jews commenced in September and October, 1348 a, at Chillon, on the Lake of Geneva, where the first criminal proceedings were instituted against them, after they had long before been accused by the people of poisoning the wells; similar scenes followed in Bern and Freyburg, in January, 1349. Under the influence of excruciating suffering, the tortured Jews confessed themselves guilty of the crime im- puted to them ; and it being affirmed that poison had in fact been found in a well at Zoffingen, this was deemed a sufficient proof to convince the world; and the persecution of the ab- horred culprits, thus appeared justifiable. Now, though we can take as little exception at these proceedings, as at the multi- farious confessions of witches, because the interrogatories of the fanatical and sanguinary tribunals, were so complicated, that by means of the rack, the required answer must inevitably be ob- tained; and it is besides conformable to human nature, that crimes which are in every body's mouth, may, in the end, be actually committed by some, either from wantonness, revenge, or desperate exasperation : yet crimes and accusations are, un- der circumstances like these, merely the offspring of a revenge- ful, frenzied spirit in the people ; and the accusers, according to the fundamental principles of morality, which are the same in every age, are the more guilty transgressors. kenstein, &c, the grave-diggers were accused of the crime.— V. Mohsen's History of the Sciences in the March of Brandenburg, T. II. p. 265. a See the original proceedings, in the Appendix.