these are crying sins, enough to provoke the anger of God.” “You may see a man washing himself from the pollution of a dead body; but from dead works, never. Again, spending much zeal in the pursuit of riches, and yet supposing the whole is undone by the crowing of a cock.” “So darkened are they in their understanding, their soul is filled with all sorts of terrors. For instance: ‘Such a person,’ one will say, ‘was the first to meet me as I was going out of doors to-day,’ and of course a thousand ills must ensue. At another time, ‘That wretch of a servant, in giving me my shoes, held out the left shoe first,’—terrible mishaps and mischief! ‘I myself, in coming out, put my left leg foremost;’ and here, too, is a token of misfortune. Then, as I go out, my right eye turns up from beneath—a sure sign of tears. Again, the women, when the reeds strike against the standards and ring, or when they themselves are scratched by the shuttle, turn this also into a sign. And again, when they strike the web with the shuttle, and do it with some vehemence, and then the reeds on the top sound, this again they make a sign; and ten thousand things besides as ridiculous. And so if an ass bray, or a cock crow, or a man sneeze, or whatever else happen, like men bound with ten thousand chains—they suspect everything, and are more enslaved than all the slaves in the world.”[1]
A long list of popular superstitions was condemned by a council held in the eighth century at Leptines, in Hainault, under the title of Indiculus superstitionum et paganarium. Pope Gregory III. issued similar anathemas.[2] The Capitularies of Charlemagne and his successors repeat the denunciation of them.
About the same date similar superstitions were rebuked in Scotland by the Abbot Cumeanus the Wise, in his tract De mensura pœnitentiarum. In the same century St. Eligius, Bishop of Noyon, preached against similar superstitions: “Above all, I implore you not to observe the sacrilegious customs of the pagans. Do not consult the gravers of talismans, nor diviners, nor sorcerers, nor enchanters, for any sickness whatsoever. . . .
