XI

SYMBOLISM

It would not be amiss to denominate our era, the Age of Unveiling. Men have become impatient of everything which conceals from them the inscrutable face of Truth, but could they behold it in its nakedness, it would appeal to them far less forcibly than it did when they beheld it through the veils of symbolism. The actor on the Hellenic stage, who assumed the character of the divine Zeus, was wise in speaking through the persona which symbolized the great deity, for by so doing he greatly enhanced the impression which he made upon the imagination of his auditors. The modern man contemptuously ignores ancient symbolism, but strangely enough is betrayed into employing a fantastic substitute. Take this passage for illustration, and volumes of a similar nature are being published: "We wander in the mazes of neo-psychological empiricism, and lose ourselves in the mists of subliminal consciousness." These wordy words, masking as they do certain elusive conceptions, appeal, no doubt, to some minds, especially to untrained ones, with a force which their translation into words of plain meaning would fail to exert. Their writer, perhaps, knew that he would fail sufficiently to impress the mind of his reader if he said, "We are perplexed by the confusions of modern spiritism, and befogged in trying to get beyond the limits of consciousness": hence he embodied his thoughts in less restricted terms, intended to be more suggestive to the imagination than commoner ones, a method far less fruitful in results than that employed by the old symbolists.

Symbolism is to-day receiving the earnest investigation of scholars. Important works upon the subject have been writ

ten, which reveal its influence upon the intellectual life of the past, and demand the attention of the student of history. That the subject is of deep interest is evinced by the collections in libraries of works relating to it; the Boston Public Library alone having no less than fifty-one titles of works, ancient and modern, treating of the history and use of symbolical emblems, which Bacon declares reduce "conceits intellectual to images sensible." Naturally in our freer and more practical age, we are wont to regard these once precious figures as fanciful and childish, yet they are instinct with the heart-beats of once living men, which could we hear would tell us of struggles and sufferings and hopes like our own.

We are apt to forget that symbolism is vital to intelligent speech, that we cannot express a thought without the use of a symbol. Symbolism in the form of pictorial emblems was especially dear to the hearts of men of the past with whom it partially assumed the place of a common language. We propose to deal in a very brief manner with but a few forms of cryptic emblems found in water-marks, printed head- and tail-pieces, and on title-pages.

WATER-MARKS

The manufacture of paper in Europe seems to have been fostered especially by the "Albigenses," as they were known in France and Spain, or "Waldenses" in the Alpine provinces, one of the purest of Christian brotherhoods appearing in history, as well as the most unfortunate. Claiming to be direct descendants of the early disciples who secluded themselves in the Alpine valleys to escape the fury of Nero and Diocletian, their aim was to exemplify in their own lives the simple truths taught by Christ, and to extend their benefits to others. The Italians called them "Cathari," signifying the pure. They were altruists in the highest sense of the term, making industry and usefulness to fellow-men inseparable rules of life. Had the crusades been successful they aspired to establish their

faith, which they conceived had come down to them from Jerusalem, in the city where it originated. Naturally they came into conflict with ecclesiastical power, and, in the end, were virtually exterminated. In the sack of Béziers alone it is said that twenty thousand of the people were put to death, and that when the Abbot of Citeaux was asked how to distinguish the heretic from the faithful, his reply was, “Kill them all, God will know his own."

In 1545, Francis I destroyed twenty-two of their villages and massacred four thousand persons, and as late as 1655, so brutal were their persecutors that Milton was moved to write his familiar poem, "Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints." Some who escaped reached England and northern Europe, where, being expert paper-makers, they practiced their art. Here more remote from the central fires of persecution, and scattered among busy communities, they escaped the sharp scrutiny of the ecclesiastical authorities, and lived in greater security, spreading silently the tenets of their faith abroad, thereby preparing the ground for the coming Reformation from which they hoped great things. But the reformation of humanity is not of mushroom growth, but of slow development. We speak of the Reformation and the Renaissance as though they were compassed by narrow and well-defined lines, but they are only convenient terms incapable of exact delimitation.

The Reformation came and disappointed them. For social reformation expands in perfection as slowly as the human hearts in which it finds its roots. They had been deceived in the heaven they expected on earth by a change in outward forms and observances, and soon found that they had only exchanged masters. Had the old rulers possessed but a remnant of that heavenly wisdom which they had received, and, cherishing it as a pearl beyond price, had led men with a gentle but firm. hand, instead of driving thousands of their most industrious and well-intentioned subjects to death, - for Torquemada

alone, according to official reports, burned alive 10,220 human beings, and inflicted upon 97,321 the penalty of infamy, confiscation, and imprisonment, the horrors of which are too painful to read, they would have continued to rule the world; or had the new rulers profited by the mistakes of their predecessors, their cause would have flourished beyond their brightest expectations; but, says Beard, "We are obliged to confess that especially in Germany it [the new order] soon parted company with free learning, that it turned its back upon culture, that it lost itself in a maze of arid theological controversy, that it held out no hand to awakening science."1 Even Luther declared that when all men possessed the Bible no more books would be written, for that would be enough. Nor did the destruction of human beings cease, for, says Bayley, "the atrocities of witch-hunting ran the Inquisition very close." 2 "In many cities of Germany the average number of executions for this pretended crime was six hundred annually," and in England, in the reign of Elizabeth, thousands likewise perished, and can we believe that Bacon's "Advancement of Learning" was denounced as heretical and impertinent, and placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum? Says Bayley, "A list of English writers who suffered from the baleful effects of Government repression - would include the names of practically all our great writers until the concluding years of the seventeenth century.

3

To return to the Albigenses: to them is attributed the use of water-marks in paper. These marks exhibit a great variety of forms of rude design. Among them we shall note the chal

1 C. Beard, B.A., The Reformation of the Sixteenth Century in its Relation to Modern Thought and Knowledge, p. 298. London, 1897. Cf. Heckthorne, Secret Societies, etc.

2 Harold Bayley, A New Light on the Renaissance, etc., p. 135. London, 1911. Charles Mackay, Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions, vol. 11, p. 102. London, 1869.

4 Bayley, A New Light, etc., p. 209.

5 C. M. Briquet, Les Filigranes; Dictionnaire Historique des Marques du Papier. London, 1908.

ice, or "pot," as it was vulgarly called, which represented the Holy Grail, from which Christ drank at the Last Supper; the cluster of grapes, signifying spiritual truth; the double candlesticks, bearers of light to dispel the darkness of error; the crescent, symbol of faith; the bugle, to proclaim the gospels to mankind; the hand, signifying, when upright, industry; reversed, benediction; the crown, victory. Even instruments of torture were represented. Combined with these were letters often reversed or diagonally placed, and other peculiarities, the significance of which is lost, but which once were pregnant with meaning, for the emblem of which they were a part served as a vehicle of thought, "A silent parable," as Quarles defines it, in an age when an open expression of opinion, not consonant with that of the ruling power, was a challenge to death. Of their use, Bayley says:

It seems to have been a happy thought on the part of the papermakers to flash signals of hope and encouragement to their fellowexiles in far distant countries, serving at the same time as an incentive to faith, and godliness in themselves.1

We see, then, that anciently water-marks in paper were not simply trade-marks as they are now; indeed, investigation shows that they were

used not only in a special way in books, but by individuals in their private correspondence. The Bacon family seem to have held them in especial favor prior even to the reign of Eliza

AB

NB

beth, their favorite mark PAPER MARKS USED BY NICHOLAS, ANTHONY

being the grail, or pot,

AND FRANCIS BACON

sometimes bearing the initials of the writer. Francis and Anthony used this device, as their letters show. Several other 1 Harold Bayley, A New Light, etc., p. 40.