SUPERSTITION 35
forbidden, and the doctor of medicine was frequently suspect—
Ubi tres medici, duo athei. And it must be admitted that medicine
and magic had much in common, and the Church had reason to '
fear these men whose "study was but little on the Bible", and
whom her own restrictions had roused to antagonism. At the
same time the fear of reason was so great that wherever the
Church could do so it stifled free enquiry: even so great and
orginal a mind as that of Roger Bacon fought for wellnigh a
lifetime against the opposition of his ecclesiastical superiors.
Most men, possessed of a less robust and enquiring intellect,
jogged along unreflectingly content, and scarcely aware of the
cramping effects of Church discipline. With all the innocence in
the world they tended their congregations, unaware of any breath
of the advancing thought and knowledge which was to threaten
their own existence. Their very teaching was pernicious in so far
as it encouraged in the peasant those qualities of superstition
and belief in magic that lurk in the background of all uneducated
peoples.
From earliest times they had endeavoured to give a Christian
interpretation to old pagan customs and legends rather than to
stamp them out.1 Thus wells once under the protection of pagan
gods were placed under the care of the Saints. The setting of
the Midsummer Watch, the May Day ceremonies, the innu-
merable rites associated with the various agricultural seasons all
had their roots in the past, and had to be adapted to the Christian
religion as best they could.
Then again, there was a wealth of legend, fable, lives of saints
and myths, all of which were widely disseminated throughout the
Middle Ages and did much to increase the ready acceptance of
the supernatural. One example will serve: the fifteenth-century
translation of the Alphabetum Nanationum contains a collection
of stories such as were used by itinerant preachers to lard their
sermons for their unlettered audiences. Almost every story is
1 See the famous letter of Gregory the Great to Mellitus and St Augustine
(June 601) instructing them to so order their actions that "the people will
have no need to change their places of concourse, where of old they were wont
to sacrifice cattle to demons, thither let them continue to resort on the day of
the saint to whom the church is dedicated, and slay their beasts no longer as
a sacrifice, but for a social meal in honour of Him whom they now worship ".
Bede, Hist. EccL i, 30.
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