CAPG's Blog 

"When, in 1453, the city of Constantinople, which is now seemingly threatened with another change of masters, came first into the possession of the victorious Moslems, we are told that the success of the assailants was largely due to the want of energy of the townsfolk who, relying upon the predictions of their monks, were satisfied that Providence must surely intervene to procure their deliverance. In particular an ancient prophecy had foretold that the Turks would advance as far as the Pillar of Constantine, but would then be driven back by an angel from Heaven, not only out of the city but back to the Persian frontier. This seems directly to have led to the crowding of the populace into the Church of St Sophia, and was mainly responsible for the horrors which were afterwards enacted there when the Turks stormed the city.

The fall of Constantinople is admittedly one of the landmarks of history, but it may be that posterity will judge the Franco-Prussian campaign of 1870-71, which called into existence the new German Empire with its vast military organization, to be also one of the turning points in the evolution of nations. Certain it is, in any case, that at this, as at other great political crises, an extraordinary craze developed itself for inquiring into the secrets of the future. No one who has not looked into the matter can form any idea of the multitude of pretended prophecies, borrowed from the most varied sources, which were gathered together at this period and published in volumes of every size and price. The best known and most respectable of these, a collection called Voix Prophétiques, was edited by a certain worthy Abbé, who had some pretensions to be regarded as a man of letters. The book quickly grew from a modest little brochure, of which two editions were printed in 1870, into a vast compilation of some fourteen hundred pages in two stout volumes, which described itself as a fifth edition and issued from the press before the close of 1872. And this was only one of a multitude of similar publications, most of them repeating the same pretended visions and oracles in slightly varying texts. Neither can it be quite truthfully maintained that this type of literature was disseminated broadcast in the teeth of ecclesiastical prohibition. It is true that Father De Buck, the Bollandist, when denouncing the flood of spurious prophecies in November, 1870, was able to assert that all the publications of this nature which had come into his hands were destitute of any kind of episcopal imprimatur. But this could not be said of all the later issues. For example, the fifth edition of the Voix Prophétiques is prefaced by a formal and lengthy approbation from Mgr Dechamps, Archbishop of Malines, who takes occasion to refer to certain articles in the Civiltà Cattolica, which had treated these and similar predictions as worthy of all respect. And, indeed, it is beyond doubt that such influential organs of French Catholic opinion as the Univers and the various Semaines Religieuses encouraged these prophecies, and for the most part did their best to give them publicity. There was a more sober party among the clergy who regarded the movement with suspicion, but they were distinctly in the minority and contented themselves as a rule with quietly holding aloof.

But that this avidity for penetrating the designs of Providence, whatever the motive which animated it, was thoroughly unhealthy in itself and most unfortunate in its result no one who looks back upon that epoch can now have any doubt. Speaking generally, the collection and dissemination of these prophecies only became very active after the first French reverses, culminating in the disaster of Sedan, had cast gloom and discouragement over the whole nation. It was, perhaps, not unnatural under such circumstances that men should clutch at straws. The predictions almost invariably announced in some form or another the ultimate triumph of France and the Church. The grands malheurs were to come first. The nation had to be purified by suffering; it had to expiate its godlessness, its vice, its frivolity, its neglect of the especial mission that had been entrusted to the eldest son of the Church. Pius IX in particular had been left a helpless prey to the enemies who had so long been plotting the overthrow of the temporal power. But when God's chastisements had been rigorously inflicted, when Paris, as many anticipated, had been burned to the ground, there would be seen the dawn of brighter things. France would come to her senses, she would welcome back the representative of the old stock of Hugh Capet (le rejeton de la Cape) according to the famous “ Prophecy of Orval,” in other words the Comte de Chambord, who was to reign as Henri cinq. “Come, young prince," so the same prophecy apostrophized him, “ quit the island of captivity, unite the lion to the white flower; come.” It caused no embarrassment to resolute believers that the “ young prince” in question was now (1871) more than fifty years of age. It mattered not to them that there was no longer any island of captivity and that he had no means of uniting the lion with the white flower.*(* The so-called “ Prophecy of Orval,” which was supposed to have been preserved from mediaeval times in the monastery of Orval (aurea vallis), near Luxemburg, was an audacious fabrication of a certain Abbé H. Dujardin. The date of the forgery is established by this very reference to the “isle of captivity,” for the Comte de Chambord only lived in Great Britain as a refugee from 1830 to 1832. By the union of the lion to the white flower the forger no doubt wished to suggest that the “ young prince," having mounted the throne of France, might marry the Princess Victoria, the future Queen of England.)

 The one important fact was that Henri V was the predestined ruler of France, and that the hour might now be looked for when his high destiny would be accomplished. And with him was to come the triumph of the Holy See and the restoration of all the Papal dominions. The words, Le grand Pape et le grand Roi, which formed the title of one of the most popular of these prophetical books,(+ This book, of which the seventh edition was published in 1872, was compiled by a famous Capuchin preacher and director of souls, Father Marie Antoine. He was known as “ Le Saint de Toulouse," and under that title a voluminous biography of him has recently been published by one of his confrères.) sum up in a phrase the whole dream of Catholic France in the years which immediately followed the humiliations of 1870.

But hand in hand with that dream, harmless enough in itself, went all kinds of delusions and credulities. That they were complete delusions the subsequent course of events has proved. Perhaps one cannot give a better illustration of the kind of beliefs which then found acceptance, almost without a voice being raised in protest, than the supposed predictions of the Venerable Anna Maria Taigi, who died in 1837. With her life and virtues, which were in many ways remarkable, we are not here concerned. Whether she ever really delivered herself of the predictions concerning the future which are commonly attributed to her is certainly open to much doubt; but the promoters of the cause of her beatification have never definitely repudiated them on her behalf, while a certain Dom Raphael Natali, who had been her confessor and who long survived her, apparently made himself responsible for their correctness. In particular she seems to have announced that the pontificate of Pius IX would last exactly twenty-seven years and a half. In point of fact he was Pope for nearly thirty-two years. Again, Anna Maria is stated to have declared most positively that he would live to see the triumph of the Church in spite of all the calamities which would previously come upon the world. She foretold, we are assured, 'three days of physical darkness, which would only be the starting-point of other marvels.

"All the enemies of the Church, hidden or open, will perish during the days of darkness with the exception of some few whom God will convert immediately afterwards.

The air will then be infected by the demons who will appear under all kinds of hideous shapes. The possession of a blessed candle will secure its owner from death, so also will the saying of prayers addressed to Our Blessed Lady and the holy angels.

After the days of darkness, Saints Peter and Paul, . having come down from heaven, will preach throughout the world and will designate the new Pope, Lumen de Coelo, who is to succeed Pius IX. A great light will flash from their bodies and will settle upon the cardinal, the future pontiff.

Saint Michael the Archangel, appearing then upon earth in human form, will hold the devil enchained until the period of the preaching of Antichrist.

In these days, Religion shall extend its empire throughout the world. There shall be “one Shepherd.” The Russians will be converted, as well as England and China, and all the faithful will be filled with joy in beholding this overwhelming triumph of the Church.

After the days of darkness, the Holy House of Loreto will be carried by the angels to Rome and will be deposited in the basilica of Saint Mary Major." (Voix Prophetiques (fifth edition), 11, pp. 170-1.)

Let it be repeated that there is no satisfactory evidence to prove that the Venerable Anna Maria ever made these prophecies.(But the Père Calixte, her biographer, records them. La Ven. Anna Maria Taigi (third edition), p. 244)

 What alone is certain is that down to the time that Pius IX died, when the peaceful election of his successor discredited the whole figment, the prediction was repeated in one publication after another, while other visions were adduced in confirmation of the first. There was, for example, a certain ecstatica, Elizabeth Canori Mora (1774-1825), who, it is curious to notice, was also, like Anna Maria Taigi, a tertiary of the Trinitarian Order. Elizabeth, according to the details given in her published Life, had visions regarding the days of darkness, the descent of the apostles SS. Peter and Paul, and the nomination of a new Pope by St Peter, which are the very counterpart of the predictions of the Venerable Anna Maria. To which of these two belongs the priority of publication we cannot pretend to say. (Let the reader who is interested compare Voix Prophétiques (fifth edition), 11, pp. 307-310, with 11, pp. 170-1. Cf. Chabauty, Concordance de Toutes les Prédictions (second edition), 1872, pp. 124-6, and P. Calixte, Vie de la V. Anna Maria Taigi (fifth edition), pp. 405-7. Cf. also V. de Stenay, Derniers Avis Prophétiques (1872), pp. 119-27.)

 Mention of the days of darkness was also made by, or at least attributed to, the stigmatisée, Palma Matarelli, of Oria, near Brindisi, a mystic who was believed to receive the Holy Communion three times daily, once at Mass and twice supernaturally from the hands of an angel. She died in March, 1888, having, it was averred, at one time for several years together taken no other nourishment than the Blessed Eucharist. Let us notice in passing that though some of the extravagant predictions attributed to her and published in the Univers and the Echo de Rome were afterwards disavowed, she unquestionably declared that the successor of Leo XIII, that is to say the late Pope, Pius X, would live to witness the triumph of the Church. (See V. de Stenay, Derniers Avis, pp. 176-7. Imbert-Gourbeyre, La Stigmatisation, vol. 1, PP. 568-9. Paris, 1894.)

Not less than the days of darkness, the suggestion of a further migration of the Holy House of Loreto also fit fortune. It has since then apparently been discovered that St Benedict Joseph Labre announced that before the end of the world the Santa Casa was to be miraculously transported to France, while a person in repute of sanctity wrote in 1862 that Our Lady had given her to understand that the place designated for this high privilege was situated in the diocese of Meaux and that its name began with the letters MARL....(V. de Stenay, Derniers At is, p. 126.)

When one looks at all closely into the developments of this epidemic of prophecy-mongering, it is difficult to resist the conviction that there must be something infectious in the atmosphere which it generates. I would appeal in proof of this to an interesting account, which was published forty years ago by two French doctors, of an examination which they made of a certain ecstatica of Fontet in the Gironde, named Marie Bergadieu, but more commonly known as Berguille. With regard to the genuineness of her trances from the pathological point of view no doubt can be entertained. The report of these gentlemen attests that when in this condition the patient could be pricked and pinched with considerable violence without her feeling any sensation of pain. They report unhesitatingly that there was both cutaneous and muscular insensibility in this condition, and they also speak of the existence of rudimentary-stigmata, though the wounds never actually formed or bled. Now, whilst in this state of trance the ecstatica frequently had visions of a beautiful lady whom she believed to be the Blessed Virgin. On July 26, 1873, the beautiful lady told Berguille, “The Great King, the very Christian King, promised to France, whose coming is now near at hand, is and can be no other than the Comte de Chambord.”

On August 23 of the same year the vision told her:

“The three days of darkness are near. Terrible events will take place. Paris will be entirely destroyed."

On September 11 Berguille announced that the Great King, Henri V, would come not by the vote of the people but by the Almighty Will of God and because he was needed to rescue France from decay and utter overthrow.
On December 8, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, Our Lady came, surrounded by a legion of angels, and told Berguille “ The Père de Bray is a saint. It is he who is destined to be the Great Pope. The critical moment is at hand. Incessant prayer is needed, but the evils that threaten will be averted, for Henri V will come.” (Mauriac and Verdalle, Etude medicale sur l'Extatique de Fontet. Paris. 1875. p. 19.)

Of course the innumerable prophecies of this period which announced the advent of Henri V were closely bound up with all kinds of fantastic imaginings concerning the coming of Antichrist and the end of the world. While all were unanimous in identifying the Comte de Chambord as the grand roi who was to inaugurate a new era of peace, there was much diversity in the forecasts regarding the pontiff destined to become the spiritual ruler of a reunited and chastened Christendom. It is not in the least surprising to discover that to certain French visionaries it had been supernaturally intimated that this pope would be a Frenchman. “He will not be a Cardinal," wrote one of the prophets, “he will be a French religious who has been persecuted by his own Order; he will have all the firmness of Sixtus V without his severity.”(See V. de Stenay, Derniers Avis, pp. 110-11.) On the other hand, it was announced, even before 1875, that this ideal pontiff, the Pastor angelicus, was a native of Dalmatia, and was then already living as a learned, humble and self-denying Franciscan. His character and work had been foretold, it appears, by “the Venerable Fra Bartholomew, of Saluzzo, whose long prophecy in odd Italian poetry Pius VI so highly esteemed as to have it enclosed in a silver urn, which is preserved as a precious relic in Rome." (The Christian Trumpet, or Previsions and Predictions about Impending General Calamities, etc. London, 1875, p. 202.)

There was a similar conflict of authorities regarding the date of the Church's final triumph. The majority of the prophecies either explicitly or by implication conveyed the idea that Pius IX himself would live to see his enemies humbled and the temporal power restored. Maximin Giraud, the shepherd boy, who with Mélanie, was the witness of the apparitions of La Salette, was positive in asserting that the Beast of the Apocalypse, whose arrival followed upon the general peace of the Church, was due at the end of the nineteenth century, or at latest at the beginning of the twentieth.(Voix Prophétiques (fifth edition), 1, p. 122.)

The Abbé Chabauty, after a painstaking attempt to reconcile all the discordant data, decided that Henri V would be recognized as sovereign of France in 1872 or 1873 and would die in 1894 or 1895, while the Holy Pope who was to triumph over heresy and infidelity would be installed by the grand roi himself, (Lettres sur les Prophéties modernes et Concordance de toutes les Prédictions (second edition, 1872), pp. 156, 173-4, 218, 220, etc.) and consequently before 1895. Similarly, a prophecy attributed to the supposed hermit Telesphorus proclaimed that the world was to come to an end in 1901,(Stenay, Derniers Avis, p. 285, and cf. Dollinger, Prophecies and the Prophetic Spirit, pp. 153, seq.) though the Soeur de la Nativité (Jeanne Le Royer) is quite precise in declaring that domesday will be deferred until at least the close of the twentieth century and most probably to a date later still.(Ib. pp. 281-2.) This latter view was supported by the fact that the list of papal mottoes attributed to St Malachy has still seven left after the religio depopulata applied to the present Pope; to which, however, the reply was easy that the last age of the world would probably be prolific in anti-popes who would rule not successively but simultaneously. Indeed, the editors of these books of prophecies in 1872 even pointed to the mottoes, ignis ardens, religio depopulata and de medietate lunae as probably descriptive of schismatical pontiffs.(The Christian Trumpet, p. 203.)

But the controversy as to the exact date of the end of the world is not one which we are tempted to linger over. Be it sufficient to note that the so-called “prophecy of St Malachy," upon which the dispute largely turned, is an audacious fabrication of the close of the sixteenth century. Though these mottoes still find popular acceptance, (Even Cardinal Newman, in his essay, The Patristical Idea of Antichrist (ed. 1872, p. 86) appeals to St Malachy's prophecy as if it were a serious document; but it must be remembered that the essay was written as a Tract for the Times as far back as 1838.) there is probably no other prophetical" document whose fraudulent character has been more conclusively established; for we can point to the book out of which the mottoes were concocted, and we find that the palpable blunders of that book are in each instance copied in the prophecy which professes to have been supernaturally inspired and given to the world four hundred years before the book itself was published. (For a justification of these statements readers may be referred to a little volume by the present writer recently issued under the title of The War and the Prophets. The Malachy prophecy is there treated at some length in Chapter VI.)

Now the first reflection which imposes itself after a survey of this prophetic literature of the 'seventies is the recognition of the plain fact that not one single detail in all this vast edifice of conjecture, hallucination and superstition has been justified by the course of events. The Comte de Chambord, in 1883, died in exile as he had lived. Pius IX, after a pontificate which extended four years beyond the term which the prophets had assigned him, passed away in 1878, and though three pontiffs have succeeded him, no change of any kind has yet taken place in the attitude of Italy to the Holy See. The end of the world has obviously not yet come and the blessed candles provided in readiness for the three days of darkness have long been forgotten or thrown aside.

Secondly, it can hardly be doubted that, as among the Greeks in the siege of Constantinople, the encouragement of these elusive hopes has led to a slackening of effort, to a forgetfulness of that supremely important maxim, that God helps those that help themselves, or, at any rate, to the adoption of an unpractical attitude of mind in which facts and fictions, realities and dreams, are constantly mistaken for each other.

Let us take an illustration from the history of the sister isle. No man ever had a truer love for his native land than the celebrated Irish scholar, Professor Eugene O’Curry. As a devout Catholic and as a patriot his testimony is above all suspicion of hostile bias. But in his lectures delivered at the Catholic University of Dublin in 1856 he speaks as follows:

"Another motive, too, impelled me to come forward—the first that I am aware of to do so—to throw doubt and suspicion on the authenticity of these long-talked-of Irish prophecies. I mean the strong sense I entertain of the evils that a blind belief in and reliance on their promises have worked in this unfortunate land for centuries back. I have myself known-indeed, I know them to this day-hundreds of people, some highly educated men and women among them, who have often neglected to attend to their worldly advancement and security by the ordinary prudential means, in expectation that the false promises of these so-called prophecies many of them gross forgeries of our own day—would in some never accurately specified time bring about such changes in the state of the country as must restore it to its ancient condition. And the believers in these idle dreams were but too sure to sit down and wait for the coming of the promised golden age, as if it were fated to overtake them, without the slightest effort of their own to attain happiness or independence.

And the lecturer added:

When such has been and continues to be the belief in such predictions, even in these modern times of peace, what must their effect have been in the days of our country's war of independence, when generation after generation so often nobly fought against foreign usurpation, plunder and tyranny? And in the constant application of spurious prophecies to the events of troubled times in every generation, observe that the spirit of intestine faction did not fail to make copious use of them. (O'Curry, Lectures on the Manuscript Materials of Ancient Irish History (Edition 1878), p. 431.)

Thirdly, it can hardly be necessary to emphasize the evil effects of this kind of literature in the begetting of superstition and credulity. It would be easy to quote dozens of typical examples, but we may content ourselves with one illustration which, after finding a place in the various periodicals devoted to unveiling the secrets of the future, was included in an English volume of prophetic utterances to which reference has already been made. The extract is adduced, with other evidence equally convincing, to prove that Antichrist had then (1872) already been born. The passage, which is given on the authority of “a gentleman connected with the highest circles of the political world [the italics, of course, belong to the original], endowed with a solid, enlightened and prudent judgment," runs as follows:

Moreover, there is an extraordinary French lady of eminent and solid virtue who has been for some years employed in divers important and difficult missions to several sovereigns in Europe, and more especially to the Pope. In arriving or passing through any country, the language of which she did not previously know, she is by a special gift of God enabled to understand well what the people say to her, and she can make herself fully understood by them. When commissioned to treat on important affairs which require secrecy, during her journey, she knows whither and to whom she is sent, but she totally forgets the subject of her mission until she is introduced to the personage to whom she has to speak. Her mission ended, she again loses the remembrance of it. The lady solemnly declares that, passing through a certain city, and having to stop at some hotel, she saw a woman with her son about twelve years old. As soon as the boy perceived this French lady he was seized with a violent colic. His mother, with some evident anxiety, asked what ailed him. He answered, “ I do not know, but as soon as I have seen that lady down below, I have been seized with a strong internal pain.” This was very likely a sign to the mother to make his real character known to the French lady, to whom she manifested that her son was Antichrist !!!
(The Christian Trumpet or Previsions and Predictions, London, 1875, P. 375)

The impression left upon the reader by this awe-inspiring narrative can only be that the supposed mother of Antichrist must have been a lady with a keen sense of humour which was distinctly not shared by her unfortunate victim. One would be tempted to assign the story to the Diana Vaughan cycle of fabrications save for the fact that it was in print a dozen years before Diana Vaughan was dreamed of. But it shows us nevertheless the type of mentality to which that most humiliating exposure of human gullibility owed its success, and it is surely replete with warnings for the future.

Further, the mention of Antichrist may remind us of another prophecy which, beyond all question, was made and reiterated under conditions of the utmost solemnity, and that by a canonized Saint. Preaching in Spain and France during the years 1409-12 the great Dominican missionary, St Vincent Ferrer, repeatedly announced the near approach of the end of the world. He worked innumerable miracles to confirm the truth of his words, and he declared that he was himself satisfied by convincing proofs that Antichrist was then already born. For this the Saint was denounced to the Pope of his obedience (it was during the great schism), viz., Benedict, formerly known as Peter de Luna. It became necessary for Vincent to defend himself, and he accordingly addressed to the Pope a letter, which is still preserved and the authenticity of which is beyond dispute. St Vincent does not in the least deny that he preached everywhere that the end of the world was close at hand. He also declared himself convinced that Antichrist was even then living, and gave reasons, founded in part upon supernatural experiences of his own, for the belief which he held. To use his own words:

From all these facts there has been formed in my mind an opinion and a probable belief, though not such as I can proclaim for an absolute certainty, that Antichrist has already been born these nine years past. But as for the conviction which I have already stated,(He had previously written, “ Quarta conclusio est quod tempus Antichristi et finis mundi erunt cito et bene cito et valde breviter." (F. Fagès, O.P. Notes et Documents de l'Histoire de St Vincent Ferrier, Paris, 1905, p. 220.) to wit, that soon, quite soon, and very shortly, the time of Antichrist and the end of the world will be upon us, I proclaim it everywhere with certainty and without misgiving, “ the Lord working with me and confirming the word by the signs that follow.” (Fagès, Notes et Documents, p. 223. I Fagès, Histoire de St Vincent Ferrier, Louvain, 1901, vol. 1, PP. 312)

Further, St Vincent both said in his sermons and told the Pope that he (St Vincent) was himself the angel spoken of in the Apocalypse (xiv, 6-7), who was sent to proclaim with a great voice, “ Fear God and give Him glory for the hour of His judgement is come.”I He declared also that when he announced that the end of the world would come soon, he meant this in the proper sense of the words (proprie et stricte loquendo), while contemporaries declared that he worked the stupendous miracle of recalling a dead person to life to bear witness to the truth of what he stated.

And yet, though all this happened more than five hundred years ago, the end of the world has not yet arrived. So, again, we learn from no less a person than St Bernard of Clairvaux, that St Norbert, the founder of the Premonstratensians, prophesied about the year 1128 that the coming of Antichrist might be expected immediately. “ I asked him," writes St Bernard, “what were his ideas about Antichrist. He declared that he knew in a very certain way that he would be made manifest in this generation (ea quae nunc est generatione revelandum illum esse). As I did not share his belief, I asked him his reasons, but his reply did not satisfy me."'* St Francis of Paola, on the other hand, the founder of the Minims, in a most astounding series of letters to a Neapolitan nobleman, predicted that before the expiration of 400 years (he was writing in 1486) a descendant of his should institute the “last and greatest of all the religious orders," a military order of “ Cross bearers," who would exterminate all the Mohammedans and unbelievers left unconverted in the last age of the world. As to the authenticity of the letters some doubt may be felt, though Morales, Cornelius a Lapide and other such writers, appeal to them without misgiving; but one thing is certain, viz., that no military religious order in any way answering the description was founded either before 1886 or since that date.

We see, then, from these examples and it would be easy to supply many others - that when canonized Saints make bold to prophesy concerning public events, they are not more immune from error than those upon whose sanctity the Church has not set her seal. Indeed, it would be hardly too much to say that in the whole of ecclesiastical history not one satisfactory example can be quoted of a prophet, whether canonized or not, who has clearly predicted any unguessable future event which was of public interest. Previsions concerning private individuals, sometimes very remarkable for their minute and exact detail, do not seem to be so rare. But with regard to public events we have every reason to believe that the dispensation enunciated by our Saviour, “ It is not for you to know the times or moments which the Father has put in His own power,” is still in full vigour. Now even those Agnostics or Rationalists who may believe in some special intuitive faculty or power of second sight would probably allow that the Christian mystic is, to say the least, not less likely to participate in such a gift than the ordinary palmist or astrologer. If the hagiographers, then, who have sedulously busied themselves with collecting examples of the prophetic faculty are constrained to admit that the Saints throughout the ages have added practically nothing to our knowledge of the future destiny of the world, is it likely that any obscure Brother Johannes, or Zadkiel or Madame de Thèbes will have information to impart which is one jot more worthy of confidence than the decision of the tossing of a coin?

I have left myself very little space to speak of those predictions concerning the present war which in a hundred different forms have been circulated in books and periodical literature since hostilities began. One's dominant feeling with regard to them comes in time to be a sense of humiliation at having wasted valuable hours over such unprofitable material. For there is absolutely nothing which deserves serious investigation. The only respect in which the prophetic literature of 1914 has any advantage over that current in 1871 is that there is less of it. The appeal to the superstitious credulity of the reader is not now, perhaps, so obvious as it was, but the fraudulent element has grown, and it is hard to believe that the editors of these later pretended prophecies are really in good faith.

Take, for example, the prediction attributed to the Blessed J. M. Vianney, the celebrated Curé d'Ars. It has been readapted to fit present circumstances in the following form:

"The enemy will not retire immediately. They will again return, destroying as they come. Effective resistance will not be offered them. They will be allowed to advance, but after that their communications will be cut off and they will suffer great losses. . They will then retire towards their own country, but they will be followed, and not many will reach their goal. They will then restore what they have taken away, and more in addition, Much more terrible things will happen than have yet been seen. Paris will suffer, but a great triumph will be witnessed on the Feast of Our Lady."

Now, apart from the fact that the terms of this supposed prophecy depend entirely upon the recollection of an uneducated lay-brother, twelve or fifteen years after the Curé had strangely selected him as the recipient of these confidences, it is certain that the editors who published it in 1872 understood the prediction to apply to a return of the Prussians before the garrisons, left to secure the payment of the war indemnity, had been withdrawn from French soil. And the last sentence about the Feast of Our Lady (September 8) is a fraudulent addition, of which no trace occurs in the other copies.(See Voix Prophétiques (fifth edition), 11, 182.)

Even more discreditable is the pro luction of a prophecy supposed to have been made by the famous Dom Bosco, which speaks of an invasion of France by the Germans in August and September, during which time “the Pope shall be dead and live again.” The superiors of the Order which Dom Bosco instituted, men who knew the saintly founder personally, deny that he ever made any such prediction. Further, though the statement was made that this document had been printed in the Matin as far back as June, 1901, inquiry at the Paris office of the Matin elicited the reply that no trace of it was to be found in the paper and that nothing was known about it.

Regarding another lengthy and remarkable prognostic which was circulated in August last as “the famous prophecy of Mayence, printed in 1854,” one can only point out that not a scrap of evidence is offered that anyone ever set eyes upon it before it saw the light a few months ago. On the other hand, as it gives a startingly accurate summary of the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71, it is quite incredible, on the supposition that it was really a “ famous prophecy” published in 1854, that no one of the scores of collections which were compiled in 1872 or thereabouts should make any reference to it. I have examined many volumes of this kind and I can attest that I have never come across a single allusion to “the famous prophecy of Mayence.”

Lastly, there is the “ Brother Johannes ” document, the most audacious of all. Not only does this supposed seventeenth century monk speak of the new Pope Benedict by name, but he tells us of the aerial warfare, of the clergy serving as combatants, of the one-armed Emperor whose soldiers have “God with us” for their device, of the manifesto of the theologians, of the extension of the war to east as well as west, etc., etc. The prophecy was communicated to the Figaro in two installments by that notoriously bizarre and extravagant personage, M. Josephin Péladan, who calls himself Le Sar (the seer) and dresses in Oriental robes to suit the character. He declares that he found it among his father's papers, and that his father obtained it from a Premonstratensian monk in the south of France. When all is said, the fact remains that no one pretends to know anything of Brother Johannes or his prophecy. No early book or manuscript has been produced nor any scrap of confirmation of the statement which M. Péladan has made. Moreover, while the prediction fits the circumstances of the war as they were known in September, at the time of its publication, not a hint is given of those not less striking later developments, the trench warfare, the sack of Belgium, the “blockade ” by submarines, etc., which could not then have been foreseen. On the other hand, the predicted cursing of the Kaiser-Antichrist by the new Pope has not been realized and is not likely to be realized. The truth seems to be that the Sar very possibly did find a rather extravagant prophetic document among the papers of his father, who collected such things. This, as we learn from the evidence of a certain Madame Faust, he converted into a sort of weird rhapsody and he used it about 1891 as a recitation piece. When the present war broke out M. Péladan bethought him of this ready made oracle, and after adding various effective touches about Pope Benedict, the Kaiser's theologians, and other incidents then palpitating with actuality, he sent off the whole concoction to the Figaro to be printed.

As a last word it may be well to point out that in spite of what has been said about the avidity of the French Legitimists in swallowing predictions and portents, this form of credulity is not to be regarded as any monopoly of Catholicism. On the one hand such vigorous writers as Bishop Dupanloup and Père De Buck soon inaugurated a healthy reaction in favour of sobriety and commonsense; on the other, the immense sale of publications like the astrological almanacs, the vogue of palmists and crystal-gazers, and the constant demand in evangelical circles for commentaries on the Apocalypse, show that an eager desire to penetrate the secrets of the future is common to all mankind. We may congratulate ourselves that in the present war the prophets have attracted comparatively little attention, and that no effort has at any rate been made to regard the acceptance of their utterances as if it were a test of orthodoxy."

 Rev. Fr. Herbert Thurston, S.J. p.341, The Plague of the False Prophets. The Dublin Review, Volume 156 edited by Nicholas Patrick Wiseman 1915

The War and the Prophets, Fr. Herbert Thurston