MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
IWAS reading last week the late Professor Marc Bloch's tragic study of the military disasters of 194o, which has just been published in an English translation under the title Strange Defeat. I was so impressed by the thoughts and experiences of this heroic historian that I borrowed from the London Library their copy of his famous work Les Rois Thaumaturges. It is a study, at once brilliant and intensive, of the miraculous powers of healing ascribed for centuries to the Kings of France and England. Professor Bloch spent many years examining records and court rolls in both countries in order to discover the origins, extent and meaning of the practice by which those suffering from scrofula were brought into the King's presence to be touched by the royal hands. All manner of problems present themselves. How came it that the Kings of France and England were believed to possess this magic pow, ? Why were the other Kings, Emperors and Popes of Europe not credited with similar capacities ? Why was it that this gift of healing was con- fined to scrofulous afflictions and did not extend (with the possible exception of the English " cramp-rings -') to ailments having a nervous, rather than a tubercular, origin ? What are the statistics of those who, in France and England, essayed this mystic cure ? What clear evidence exists that any of these patients were actually restored to health by this laying on of hands ? And what was the exact procedure followed for a ceremony which must have required a certain amount of organisation if it were not to prove, for even the least fastidious King, a most repugnant ordeal ? Professor Bloch was too conscientious a historian to pretend that he had discovered any complete answers to these questions. Intellectual and profes- sional probity was the ruling passion of his noble life. But he does provide us with many suggestions and conjectures which throw a new light upon the theory of the Divine Right of Kings.
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The idea that the King, as the protector and embodiment of the community, possessed supernatural powers of causing and curing illness is one, of course, which goes back to pre-history. Sir James Frazer, in fact, suggests that the Kings of France and England were credited, on the analogy of the Tonga islanders, with possessing the faculty, not merely of curing those humble suffering souls who knelt to receive the royal touch, but also of inflicting scrofula upon those of their Ministers and subjects who proved recalcitrant or incurred the royal displeasure. Professor Bloch considers this assertion to be based upon a false analogy and not upon any valid evidence. He finds that the Merovingians and the Carolingians never laid claim to any such magical powers ; the practice of " touching " for " the King's evil " or le mal le roi was introduced into France by the Capet family. It is first mentioned in the reign of Philip I (to6o- 1108) but it seems that by that date the legend had, in France at least, become firmly established. Professor Bloch, I regret to say, rejects the theory, which Shakespeare expounded, that the royal touch was inaugurated in England by Edward the Confessor. If the latter performed miracles, either during his lifetime or after his death, it was not in his royal capacity but in his capacity as a saint. The origins of the English practice were imitative and mundane. Guibert de Nogent in the twelfth century had expressed the opinion that no King of England would " dare " to imitate a practice which had become the recognised monopoly of the Kings of France. Professor Bloch is convinced that it was Henry I who, for dynastic purposes, " dared" to imitate the practice of the French Court.
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The English Kings improved on the French practice in two ways. The King of France, when touching a scrofulous patient, would mumble the words "Le Roi to touche, Dieu to guerit." The King of England made no such modest disclaimer. He would make the sign of a cross on the patient's forehead and thereafter wash his hands in water. The water was then drained off into bottles and given to the patients with instructions that they should drink it on an empty stomach for the ensuing nine days. The English Kings moreover, at the conclusion of the ceremony, would hang a small medal or amulet attached to a ribbon around the patient's neck. The cost of these medals was entered in the royal accounts, and Professor Bloch has thus been able to- estimate, year by year, how many scrofulous patients applied for treatment. In the reigns of the first three Edwards the yearly average of patients did not exceed five hundred ; a falling off in the medals presented can be noted during periods of civil disturbance or when the King was absent on foreign wars. The decline in the personal prestige of Edward II can be estimated by the fact that, although in 1316 he touched 214 patients, in 1321 the number of applicants had dropped to 79. The rise in the popularity of Charles II, or perhaps the increased incidence of scrofula, can be gauged from the fact that in the last year of his reign he touched as many as 6,6to sufferers. The custom continued until the death of Queen Anne who had the privilege of touching Samuel Johnson in his infancy. He retained from that occasion a vague recollection of " a lady in diamonds and a long black hood." William of Orange stoutly refused to participate in any such super- stitious practices. The Old and the Young Pretenders continued when in exile to exert their diminishing powers, and the last of the Stuarts to touch for the King's evil was Cardinal York in the guise of Henry IX. Charles X of France revised the ceremony abortively on May 31st, 1825. It was not a success.
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Another innovation introduced and invented by the English Kings was that of medicinal rings, called " cramp-rings," since they were regarded as a cure for epilepsy and muscular spasms. The hands of the King or Queen would be anointed with holy oil and he or she would then rub the rings between the palms ; Professor Bloch asserts that none of these cramp-rings has been known to survive. A further difference between the French and English practices seems to have been that in France no King was regarded as qualified to touch for scrofula until he had been anointed from the holy ampulla, or sainte ampoule: in England, the magic touch descended upon him immediately after his accession. The English moreover appear to haye been persistently jealous of the superior virtue of the French ampoule. This particular lekythion first appeared at the christening of Clovis ; the priest charged with bringing the holy oil to the font was delayed by the huge crowds thronging the entrance ; the dis- tressing pause which ensued was broken by a pigeon who fluttered down upon the altar with the precious oil-can in its beak. In order to counteract the effects of this legend, the British invented one of their own, according to which their own sacred oil had been given to 'It. Thomas a Becket by the Holy Virgin and lost awhile. Even today the anointing with oil plays an important symbolic part in our Coronation service.
* * It is these strange bypaths of legend and ceremonial which Marc Bloch explored in Les Rois Thaumaturges. He could provide no satisfactory answer to the question why scrofula of all illnesses was chosen as the one most susceptible to this form of magic. He could not tell with any precision what was the percentage of cures effected. He gave no more satisfactory explanation as to why other monarchs did not claim similar supernatural powers than that they came too late into the field. He does divulge, however, that certain royal families possessed secret medicines, which they kept carefully to themselves, handing them down from father to son. The Coburg family, for instance, owned a family eye-lotion or Augenwasser, the secret of which was not imparted to their subjects or even to the numerous royal cousins whom the Coburgs came to amass. M. Bloch is not concerned with the effect of the gift of healing upon the theory of Divine Right. But he does suggest that the Kings them- selves did not all take the ceremony very seriously, and he recounts how James I, when asked by the Turkish Ambassador to touch his son, laughed so immoderately that his great tongue lolled out of his mouth.
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