In the ninth place are the various vain observations in repelling evils and healing diseases. For example, if someone makes an offering from goods obtained by alms, believing them more effective for obtaining the effect; if someone thinks that a cross bought or made from alms is holier and more effective; if people offer wax or another material to saints, mixing in hair of a person or bristles of a sick animal; if they immerse images in water in order to obtain rain; if they make certain ligatures so that milk is not taken away from cows; if they urinate through a betrothal ring so that they may be freed from harmful magic; if, for curing certain head pains and similar diseases, they apply the neck to a pig’s trough or drinking vessel, saying, “In the name of the Father,” and so forth; if they measure the belt of a sick person in order to know from which saint health must be obtained, with other fixed rites applied; if they split a straw with an axe so that swellings of hands or fingers may be healed; if for certain diseases of livestock they build fires from particular kinds of wood and drive the animals into it, or lead them around it in a circle, and offer to the saints whichever animal passes through first.
There are those who bake a cake of St. Lupus with this rite: they bake a triangular cake under the pretext of honoring the most sacred Trinity, and impress five holes in it in memory, so they color it, of the wounds of Christ. Then, in honor of blessed Lupus, they give the cake as alms to the first beggar who meets them, not by design, but unknowingly and by chance. In this way they think that herds and flocks, even alone in pastures, cannot be attacked by wolves. This is frequent in villages near Tienen and Louvain.
Superstition betrays itself in this, to omit the rest: the cake must be given to a chance beggar. What does this have to do either with guarding livestock or with the honor of God? Such too are the ligatures of herdsmen for freeing dogs and cattle from plague and wasting disease, or for bringing these things upon the cattle of others. Read Burchard in the cited chapter 19, under “Have you made ligatures?”
To this must be referred the countless forms of prayers by which wounds are commonly healed, diseases cured, or misfortunes warded off. Such is the one about which Burchard writes in the same place, under “Have you gathered”: “Have you gathered medicinal herbs with other incantations, with the Creed and the Lord’s Prayer?” Correct boldly to “rather than with the Creed and the Lord’s Prayer,” that is, singing “I believe in God” and “Our Father.” “If you have done otherwise, you shall do penance for ten days on bread and water.”
There is another in use among Spanish soldiers, which certain healers, as they report, living holy lives and healing all people gratis, use only with the placing on of linens and with the recitation of certain words. The formula was Spanish, but I shall render it word for word in English:
Through Christ, and with Christ, and in Christ, to you, God the Father almighty, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, is all honor and glory, forever and ever. Let us pray. Warned by saving precepts and formed by divine instruction, we dare to say: Our Father, who art in heaven, and so forth. Amen. Jesus.
The power of the Father, the wisdom of the Son, the strength of the Holy Spirit, heal this wound from every evil. Amen. Jesus.
My Lord Jesus Christ, I believe that on the night of Holy Thursday, at supper, after you washed the feet of your holy disciples, you took bread into your most holy hands, blessed and broke it, and gave it to your holy disciples, saying: Take and eat, for this is my body. Likewise you took the cup into your most holy hands, gave thanks, and handed it to them, saying: Take and drink, because this is my blood of the new testament, which will be poured out for many for the remission of sins. As often as you do this, do it in memory of me. I beseech you, Lord soldier Christ, that through these most holy words, and through their power, and through the merit of your most holy Passion, this wound and this evil may be healed. Amen. Jesus. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Jesus.
Concerning this formula a question was raised at Ypres in the preceding year, especially because no natural medicine was added. The most reverend bishop of Ypres, Simonius, and his counselors judged this whole healing superstitious and illicit, and prohibited anyone from using it. This condemnation seemed harsh to many, but undeservedly.
[margin: Burchard on gathering herbs and prayers; the Ypres question concerning the Spanish soldiers’ healing formula; Bishop Simonius of Ypres and his counselors; allusions to the Canon of the Mass and the Church’s reverence for the words of consecration]
For here the whole effect is expected from God by way of miracle. But to ask miracles so continually and almost from custom is to tempt God. Second, holy men, when performing miracles, did not use fixed formulas of words, as though conceived in advance, but now this way, now that way, as the Holy Spirit suggested. Third, the holiness of this person is not sufficiently proved. For it happens very often that harmful-magicians, by outward appearance, falsely pretend holiness. Nor in this matter are soldiers sufficiently suitable judges, to whom those seem holy who do not outwardly reveal grave sins. Fourth, those who have received from God the gift of healings never receive it with the condition that they use such and such words. Rather, such fabricated formulas are signs of at least a hidden pact.
Fifth, it is not lawful for private persons to invent formulas which neither sacred Scripture nor ecclesiastical usage has approved, such as this one. It licentiously abuses and corrupts many words of the most holy sacrifice of the Mass, even of the Canon itself. Finally, it applies the words of consecration to a matter for which they were not instituted, which is not to be permitted, and besides asks that the effect be granted by the power of the aforesaid words. That power was directed by our Savior not to the closing of bodily wounds, but to the transubstantiation of bread and wine.
Nor should this be neglected: the Church and her Catholic children have always held these most holy words of consecration in such veneration that they considered it unlawful to use them except in the sacrifice of the Mass, or when they had to be used necessarily in church, schools, or disputations. By contrast, the Devil and his members, harmful-magicians, use no things more willingly or frequently for their unspeakable sacrileges than the venerable Eucharist itself and those things that pertain to it.
These were the things that now occurred to me against this and similar formulas.
[margin: Malleolus, two treatises on exorcisms; reference to his prohibited status among writers of the first class; Martin of Arles on superstitions; John in the Summa of Confessors; the Heidelberg retraction of 1405 under the bishop of Speyer and university experts]