Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing by George Barton Cutten (websites to read books for free txt) 📖

They expel evil spirits, and perform many cures, and foresee certain events, according to the will of the Logos." In another of his works we find the following: "For they [the Jews] have no longer prophets or miracles, traces of which to a considerable extent are still found among Christians, and some of them more remarkable than ever have existed among the Jews; and these we ourselves have witnessed."

As has already been seen, different methods were used by various healers, and we must not omit a brief account of healing by unction. The very definite instructions laid down in the Epistle of James were evidently strictly carried out in the early church, but the first definite mention of anointing after that made by Mark and James is found in the writings of Tertullian (160-220). He speaks of the pagan emperor Severus being graciously mindful of Christians: "For he sought out the Christian Proculus, surnamed Torpacion, the steward of Euhodias, and in gratitude for his having once cured him by anointing, he kept him in his palace till the day of his death."59

If the Christians anointed pagans it is legitimate to suppose that they also anointed fellow-Christians, and that if this was performed without special mention about the end of the second century, it must have been common from the time of James to that period. It is probable that during the first seven centuries of our era the practice of praying with the sick and anointing them with oil never ceased. There may be some objection to our considering the subject of anointing with oil as purely mental healing, but according to the instructions given for its use there was scarcely enough oil employed to be of benefit otherwise, and especially as food. Mental healing, then, is the rationale of the cures.

Puller60 gives us three of the earliest incidents of healing by unction, the original accounts all being written by contemporaries and friends. Some time between the years 335 and 355, St. Parthenius, Bishop of Lampsacus, anointed a man who was described as "altogether withered." The account says: "Then getting up, he gently and gradually softened the man's body with the holy oil, and straightway made him to rise up healed." Refinus, a well-known writer and an eye-witness to this healing, tells of St. Macarius of Alexandria and four monks restoring, about the year 375, "a man, withered in all his limbs and especially in his feet." He says: "But when he had been anointed all over by them with oil in the Name of the Lord, immediately the soles of his feet were strengthened. And when they said to him, 'In the name of Jesus Christ ... arise, and stand on thy feet, and return to thy house,' immediately arising and leaping, he blessed God." Some years later, Palladius, the friend of St. Chrysostom, writes of another of St. Macarius's cures which he witnessed: "But at the time that we were there, there was brought to him from Thessalonica a noble and wealthy virgin, who during many years had been suffering from paralysis. And when she had been presented to him, and had been thrown down before the cell of the blessed man, he, being moved with compassion for her, with his own hands anointed her during twenty days with holy oil, pouring out prayers for her to the Lord, and so sent her back cured to her own city."

The Sacramentary of Serapion, Bishop of Thmuis, Egypt, written about 350, provides for the consecration of bread and water, as well as oil, for healing; and in a prayer concerning oil and water there contained, the following words are used: "Grant healing power upon these creatures, that every fever and every demon and every sickness may depart through the drinking and the anointing, and that the partaking of these creatures may be a healing medicine and a medicine of complete soundness in the Name of the Only begotten, Jesus Christ," etc. The Apostolic Constitutions of about 375 contain a prayer of consecration used over oil and water brought by members of the congregation, as follows: "Do thou now sanctify this water and this oil, through Christ, in the name of him that offered or of her that offered, and give to these things a power of producing health and of driving away diseases, of putting to flight demons, of dispersing every snare through Christ our Hope," etc.

About 390, St. Jerome wrote a life of St. Hilarion (291-371) in which the latter is thus set forth as a healer: "But lo! that parched and sandy district, after the rain had fallen, unexpectedly produced such vast numbers of serpents and poisonous animals that many, who were bitten, would have died at once if they had not run to Hilarion. He therefore blessed some oil, with which all the husbandmen and shepherds touched their wounds and found an infallible cure."

Oil was not always employed for anointing, but might be drunk by the sick, and this use of it was made in healing a girl, by St. Martin of Tours, about 395. St. Germain, Bishop of Auxerre (418-448), when the physicians were powerless during a plague, blessed some oil and anointed the swollen jaws of those who were sick, whereupon they recovered; and St. Genevieve of Paris, who died about 502, used to heal the sick with oil.

In Bede's biography of St. Cuthbert we find an instance of this saint healing a girl about the year 687. A young woman was troubled for a whole year with an intolerable pain in her head and side which the physicians were unable to relieve. Cuthbert "in pity anointed the wretched woman with oil. From that time she began to get better, and was well in a few days."

At the beginning of the eighth century the anointing of the sick began to decline, largely on account of the changed attitude of the church. At this time this ceremony began to be used for spiritual ills rather than for bodily diseases. Before long, anointing was monopolized by the church for spiritual advantage, and is still so used by the Roman Catholic Church in the ceremony of Extreme Unction.

In returning to the more direct methods of healing, we find that St. Gregory of Nazianzus (329-390) confirmed the reports of the marvellous cures wrought by the martyrs, Cosmo and Damian, who were beheaded in 303. During the life of Gregory of Tours (538-594), the healing efficacy of the saints' relics was rivalled by the miraculous aid rendered to the sick by St. Julian. The solitude of the holy anchorite was interrupted by the persistent and despairing clamor of the sick to whom he gave health. The great Turonese pontiff also tells us that one day Aredius, traversing Paris, found Chilperic prostrate with a grievous fever. The royal sufferer sought the saint's prayers as an irresistible curative.

The daughter of a Teutonic nobleman was brought to St. Gall (556-640) seriously ill with an incurable disorder, presenting the livid appearance of an animated cadaver. The saint approached the unconscious invalid as she reclined on her mother's knee, and assuming the bended attitude of invocation by her side, made a fervent prayer and evoked the demon producing the sickness to instantly depart. The effort was all that was desired. Shortly after this, about the year 648, St. Vardrille, the founder of Fontanelle, exercised his remedial potency in healing the palsied arm of a forester whose indiscreet zeal had induced him to transfix the sainted abbot with a lance.

We have rather a strange case from the beginning of the seventh century, where the moral and mental element seems to have been strong. Abbe Eustasius returning from Rome, whither a mission of Clothair II had called him, was urgently summoned by the sorrowful parent of a Burgundian maiden, in the last agonies of a frightful malady, to appear and cure the moribund daughter. On answering the call he found that the child had in her youth been consecrated by the vows of chastity, and on account of this shrunk from a marriage sanctioned by her parents. Eustasius reproached the father for his efforts to violate the solemn obligations of the0 virgin, and upon obtaining a formal renunciation of further attempts to coerce her into matrimony, the saint, by personal intercession, obtained a complete cure.

It was found that certain remedies in the hands of certain saints were efficacious, but they did not have the same power if administered by others. For instance, Franciscus de Paula succored an anchylosed joint by the energetic surgery of three dried figs which he gave the suffering patient to eat. Similarly, a maiden grieving under a cancerous disease which surgical skill had frankly admitted was incurable, was restored to robust vigor by the administering of some mild herbs. This savored rather too much of medicine, and other holy healers used more orthodox means. Hugo the Holy abstracted a serpent from the infirm body of a woman by the use of holy water, and Coleta, the saintess, awakened from the dreamless slumber of death more than one hundred slain infants by the efficacy of a cross.

Even such a serious disorder as leprosy was said to have been healed by saintly care. St. Martin, who gave special attention to sufferers with this disease, cured a leper by kissing him, we are told. Toward the middle of the sixth century, St. Radegonde displayed her faith by first washing the repulsive sores and afterward applying her pure lips to them. On one occasion an insolent leper asserted that unless his putrefying limbs were kissed by this candidate for canonical honors he could not be cured.61

Bede (673-735), the great English historian, in his careful way tells us of cures performed by St. John of Beverly during the first part of the eighth century. According to this record, St. John cured a dumb youth, who had never spoken a word, by the sign of the cross on his tongue, and he afterward had "ready utterance." He used holy water on a woman so that, like Peter's wife's mother, she arose and ministered to them, healed a friend who was injured by being thrown from a horse, cured a nun of a grievous complaint, and restored a servant, an account of which I shall give in Bede's words: