INVENTORES DE ANJOS E DEMÓNIOS
A literatura alemã, quer popular quer
erudita, é rica em narrativas fantásticas. A intervenção do sobrenatural, os
poderes mágicos, a superstição e o animismo das coisas naturais e inanimadas
que inspiraram tantas criações literárias têm a sua origem na própria vida, nas
crenças e tradições que, embora pagãs e profanas, coexistiram e imbuíram as
crenças religiosas e as vivências sociais. Dentro e fora da religião, estas
crenças persistiram; tiveram influência quer sobre os mais dogmáticos quer
sobre os mais reformistas e acompanharam a evolução do pensamento e das
mentalidades em toda a Europa. A eterna luta entre o bem e o mal está
subjacente a todas estas crenças e fantasias. Mas onde termina o bem e começa o
mal? E de que forma é que os conceitos de bem e mal moldam a justiça?
Na perspectiva de Gustav Freytag, a
mitologia greco-romana é a grande responsável pela disseminação de inúmeras
superstições, reformuladas e recriadas segundo a cultura pré-existente de cada
povo ou comunidade. A ideia de “diabo” (o supremo mal, o grande tentador) nasce
com o Cristianismo, que coloca Cristo (o supremo bem, o salvador) num confronto
com a sua antítese. O Cristianismo não eliminou as crenças primevas, adaptou-as
ou adaptou-se a elas, deu-lhes novas roupagens e propósitos. A luta entre o bem
e o mal, a luz e as trevas persiste com novos nomes, imagens e protagonistas.
Mais do que vencer o mal, as crenças e práticas religiosas (cristãs ou outras)
vêm proteger do mal. Um artifício que torna as religiões indispensáveis para
combater o grande tentador, mesmo que sejam as religiões a origem de tantos
males. As religiões apropriaram-se do bem e do mal, inventaram deuses e
demónios, e tornaram-nos dogmas, legislaram sobre eles, instituíram a sua
própria jurisdição e aplicaram sobre os descrentes, os críticos e os inocentes
as penas mais bárbaras.
No início do capítulo dedicado às
concepções do diabo na cultura alemã do século XVI, Gustav Freytag explica esta
génese da concepção do mal na cultura germânica. Em seu entender, as
superstições ligadas ao diabo floresceram mais na cultura alemã do que em
qualquer outra. Deve ter razão, ou não fosse um alemão o criador do Doutor
Fausto que vende a alma ao diabo em troca de todo o conhecimento. Os excertos
que transcrevo a seguir são longos mas vale a pena serem lidos. G. Freytag
narra também a relação pessoal de Lutero com o diabo (os “poor devils” que insistiam em atormentá-lo sem causar grande dano e
os “great devils” que em seu entender
eram os “doctores theologiae”, esses
sim, verdadeiramente perigosos e malévolos) e a forma matreira e engenhosa que
Lutero arranjou para o ridicularizar e enfraquecer. Esses episódios não são
aqui transcritos, mas também vale a pena lê-los.
Seguem-se dois longos excertos: um sobre a forma como a religião forjou um fanatismo bárbaro; outro sobre a tentativa de uns poucos iluminados e sensatos restabelecerem a humanidade nas terras e nas mentes corrompidas e devastadas por dogmas absurdos.
EXCERTO
1:
«The
phantasies of the human mind have also a history; they form and develop
themselves with the character of a people whilst they influence it. In the century of the Reformation, these phantasies had
more weight than most earthly realities. It is the dark side of German development which we there
see, and to it is due the last place in the characteristic features of the
period of the Reformation.
In the most
ancient of the Jewish records there is no mention
of the devil except in the book of Job; but at the time of Christ, Satan
was considered by the Jews as the great tempter of
mankind, and as having the power to enter into men and animals, out of
which he could be driven by the invocations of pious men. The people estimated
the power of their teachers by the authority that they exercised over the devil.
When the Christian faith spread over the western empire, the Greek and Roman gods were looked upon as allies of the devil, and the superstition of many
who yet clung to the later worship of Rome, made
the devil the centre of their mythology.
But the
conceptions which the Fathers of the Church had of the person and power of the
devil, were still more changed when the German
tribes overthrew the government of the Roman empire and adopted Christianity.
In doing so this family of people did not lose the fullness of their
own life, the highest manifestation of which was their old mythology. It is
true that the names of the old gods gradually died away; what was obviously contrary to the new faith was at last
set aside by the zeal of the priests, by force, and by pious artifices;
but innumerable familiar shapes and figures, customs and ideas, were kept
alive, nay, they not only were kept alive, but they entwined
themselves in a peculiar manner with Christianity. As Christian churches
were erected on the very spots where the heathen worship had been held, and as
the figure of the crucified Saviour, or the name of an apostle was attached to
sacred places like Donar's oak; thus the Christian
saints and their traditions took the place of the old gods. The people transferred their recollections of their ancient heathen
deities to the saints and apostles of the Church, and even to Christ himself,
and as there was a realm in their mythology which was ruled by the mysterious powers of darkness, this was assigned to the devil. The name devil, derived
from the Greek (diabolos), was changed into Fol, from the northern god Voland,
his ravens and the raging nightly host were transferred to him from Wuotan, his
hammer from Donar; but his black colour, his wolves or goat's form, his
grand-mother, the chains wherewith he was bound, and many other traditions, he inherited from the evil powers of heathendom which
had ever been inimical to the benevolent ruling gods. These powerful demons,
amongst whom was the dark god of death, belonged according to the heathen
mythology to the primeval race of giants, which as long as the world lasted
were to wage a deadly struggle with the powers of light. They formed a dark
realm of shapeless primordial powers, where the deepest science of magic was
cultivated. (…)Besides the worship of the Asengötter, there was in heathen
Germany a gloomy service for these demons, and we learn from early Christian
witnesses that even before the introduction of
Christianity, the priestesses and sorcerers of these dark deities were feared
and hated. They were able by their incantations to the goddess of death,
to bring storms upon the corn-fields and to destroy the cattle, and it was
probably they who were supposed to make the bodies and weapons of warriors
invulnerable. They carried on this worship by night, and sacrificed mysterious
animals to the goddess of death and to the race of giants. It was these
priestesses more especially — so at least we may conclude — who, as Hazusen or
Hegissen, or Hexen (witches), were handed down by tradition to a late period in
the middle ages.
«(…) The
western Church in the beginning of the middle ages
kept itself pure from this chaos of gloomy conceptions; it condemned them as
devilish, but punished them on the whole with
mildness and humanity, when they did not lead to social crimes. But when
the Church itself was frozen into the rigidity of a
hierarchical system, when strong hearts were driven into heresy by the
worldly claims of the papacy, and the people became degraded under the
nomination of begging monks, these superstitions
gradually produced in the Church a narrow-minded system. Whatever was
considered to be connected with the devil was put an end to by bloody persecution. After the thirteenth century,
about the period when great masses of the people poured into the Sclave
countries from the interior of Germany, fanatical
monks disseminated the odious notion that the devil, as ruler of the witches,
held intercourse with them at nightly meetings, and that there was a formal
ritual for the worship of Satan, by accursed men and women, who had abjured the
Christian faith; and for this a countless number of
suspected persons, in France, in the first instance, were punished with torture
and the stake, by delegated inquisitors. In Germany
itself, these persecutions of the devil's associates first became prevalent after the funeral pile of Huss.
The more vehement the opposition of reason to these persecutions, the more
violent became the fury of the Church. After the fatal bull
of Innocent VIII., from the year 1484, the burning
of witches in masses began to a great extent in Germany, and continued,
with some interruptions, till late in the eighteenth century. Whoever owned to
being a witch was considered for ever doomed to hell, and the Church hardly
made an effort to convert them.
According
to popular belief, the connection of man with the
devil was of three kinds. Either they renounced the worship of God for
that of the devil, swearing allegiance to him, and doing him homage, like the witches and their associates; or they
were possessed by him, a belief derived by the Germans from Holy Scripture; or
men might conclude a compact with the devil binding both parties under mutual
obligations.
«(…) Then
came Luther and the Reformation. Together
with everyone else in Germany, the devil also was
brought into the great struggle of the century. The Roman Catholics looked upon him as the head of the whole body of heretics; while the Protestants took the popular view of him as a figure standing with a bellows behind the pope and
cardinals, inflating them with attacks on the reformed doctrines. He was
mixed up in all theological and political transactions (…).»
(In Pictures of
German Life in the XVth, XVIth and XVIIth
Centuries, Vol. I
by Gustav Freytag, Chapman and Hall, London, 1862. Chapter XII – “The German
Ideas of the Devil in the Sixteenth Century”, pp. 281-285)
O próprio Martinho Lutero acreditava em
bruxas mas de uma forma natural e benigna, como quem sabe que o mistério existe
e não é possível saber e controlar tudo. As vítimas podiam pertencer a qualquer
estrato social e a qualquer escalão etário, mas eram sobretudo os mais
insignificantes as principais vítimas, e, de entre estes, as mulheres. A
insaciável ganância do poder político e eclesiástico escolhia também alguns de
entre os mais abastados (Judeus e outros) e assim, o vil metal, que é um dos
verdadeiros demónios criados pelo homem, enchia os cofres dos que fingiam
purificar o mundo com as chamas do seu supremo mal.
«(…) But fierce indeed was the hatred with which was regarded, in the
last half of the century, that other connection with hell, —the old witchcraft.
Even Luther believed in witches; he mentions
incidentally that such a woman had injured his mother; and in another place was
angry with the lawyers who did not punish similar sorceresses when they injured
their fellow-creatures. But these expressions were not intended to be very
severe; he on the whole troubled himself little with this phase of
superstition. He, the copious writer, never considered it necessary to
discourse to his people concerning it; in his sermons he only occasionally
mentions witchcraft, and his whole nature was repugnant to the application of
violence. But if happily for us, Luther's pure spirit preserved him from
bitterness against the devil's helpmates, his
scholars and successors had little of his high-mindedness. Young
Protestantism was on this point little better than the old belief. In
Protestant countries the ministers of God were by no means the only
persecutors; the civil authorities were also willing to follow the example of
the ecclesiastical courts of the Roman Catholics, and above all of the Jesuits.
The victims were countless; they amount without
doubt to hundreds of thousands. It was first in the domains of the
ecclesiastical princes, that the contagion burst forth, which devastated whole
provinces as in Eichstadt, Wurtsburg and Cologne. In twenty villages in the
vicinity of Treves, three hundred and sixty-eight
persons were executed in seven years, besides many who were burnt in the
city itself; in Brunswick the burnt stakes stood like a little forest on the
place of execution. In every province hundreds and
thousands might be counted. Every kind of
baseness was practiced by the ecclesiastical and temporal judges; the
most contemptible grounds of suspicion sufficed to depopulate whole villages. No
position and no age was a security; children and the aged, learned men and even
councillors, were bound to the stake, but the
greater part were women; — we shudder when we look at the method of
these condemnations. It is not impossible, although it cannot be spoken of with
certainty, that a victim here and there did live in the mad delusion that they
were in union with the devil through magic arts; it is not impossible, although
this cannot be certified, that hurtful mediums, intoxicating beverages and
superstitious medicaments were in some cases used for the detriment of others.
But it is the strongest proof of the infamy of the whole proceeding, that
amidst the monstrous mass of old records concerning witches, we find no ground of belief that in any case the judgment was
justified by the real misdeeds of the accused, though they were made the
excuse for it; for so great was the degree of fanaticism, narrow-mindedness, or
malice, that the mere accusation was almost certain
to be fatal. Torture was applied on the most frivolous charges; the capability even of bearing pain was taken as evidence
against those who held out under torture; and every kind of accidental
symptom, disease of the body, outward appearance, or countless fortuitous
circumstances, were also considered as evidence. The
possessions of the condemned were confiscated; the greediness and
covetousness of the judges were united with brutality and stupidity. This fearful
disorder did not end with that century: through the whole of the sixteenth and
up to the middle of the eighteenth century these horrible judicial murders
continued. It was not till the time of the great Frederick that they ceased.
(…) One
name belongs to the sixteenth century which should ever be named with
gratitude; that of the Protestant physician Johann
Weier, physician in ordinary to Duke Wilhelm of Cloves, who in 1593
wrote his three volumes — De praestigiis
Daemonum. Even he believed in necromancers, who, by the help of the devil,
wrought mischief, in which case they were to fall under the punishment of the
laws; but the witches he considered as poor miserable beldames, who, in the
worst cases, only imagined themselves to be doing the work of the devil, but
were for the most part quite innocent. His warm heart for the oppressed, and
his noble indignation against the brutality of the judges in the cases of witchcraft,
made an immense sensation. Within his limited sphere of action Weier appears to us as a supplement to Luther.
Against him also the raging orthodox crew upraised themselves. The good effect
produced by Weier's book was in a great manner counteracted by a flood of
opposition writings. But again amidst the horrors of the Thirty years' war, Friedrich Spee, the best of the German Jesuits,
wrote secretly his Cautio Criminalis
against the burning of heretics; he published this anonymously in a Protestant
printing-press.
The various
popular transformations of the devil did not end with the century in which
Luther taught, and Weier endeavoured to banish the stake from the place of
execution. The Thirty years' war brought forward another set of gloomy
fantasies concerning him. Satan was considered by the wild troopers as a demon
who made fortresses, and cast magic balls which could penetrate every kind of
armour.
When the
peace came, the war-devil withdrew into the woods, where he taught his arts to
the wild huntsmen; and when there remained nothing
in the land but an impoverished population devoid of faith and hope, the devil
was sought after in his ancient and quiet occupation-only disturbed by the
covetousness of men — as the guardian of
hidden treasures. Much money and property had been buried during the long war,
and was discovered by lucky accidents after the peace.»
(In Pictures of
German Life in the XVth, XVIth and XVIIth
Centuries, Vol. I
by Gustav Freytag, Chapman and Hall, London, 1862. Chapter XII – “The German
Ideas of the Devil in the Sixteenth Century”, pp. 307-309)
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