Middle Ages.[1] Hence it was that of old, storms were conjured to depart by the sign of the cross or the ringing of church bells, as indeed to this day Roman Catholics are wont to cross themselves during a thunderstorm.
From the first the Church, by the decrees of Councils and the voice of her chief Fathers and Doctors, condemned such superstition as she deemed worthy of notice; not however on the ground of folly, but of impiety. It is possible, therefore, that her denunciations might go towards confirming a belief in the whole fabric of superstition, as a real and powerful though forbidden thing. “Religion,” said Lactantius, “is the cultus of the truth, superstition is that of the false.” Among persons mentioned in the Apostolical Constitutions as unworthy of baptism are “magicians, enchanters, astrologers, diviners, magical charmers, idle and wandering beggars, makers of amulets and phylacteries, and such as dealt in heathenish lustrations, soothsayers and observers of signs and omens, interpreters of palpitations, observers of accidents in meeting others, making divinations therefrom as upon a blemish in the eye or in the feet, observers of the motions of birds or weazels, observers of voices and symbolical sounds. All these are to be examined and tried a considerable time whether they would relinquish their arts or not. If they did they might be received; if not they were to be rejected from baptism. Phylacteria were amulets made of riband with a text of scripture or some other charm of words written on them to cure diseases or to keep off danger—a piece of heathen superstition hard to cure. Clergymen who made such were condemned by the council of Laodicea, and the wearers ordered to be cast out of the Church. The council of Trullo decreed six years’ penance for such offenders.”—Bingham’s Antiquities, book xi. chap. 5. “I omit other things that might make us weep,” says St. Chrysostom.[2] “Your auguries, your omens, your superstitious observances, your casting of nativities, your signs, your amulets, your divinations, your incantations, your magical arts,—
