phesied misfortune. The last
elk that was slain in Silesia was for the last joyous repast of the
last of the Piasten. A few days after he died; and when his coffin was
borne in the evening through the streets of Liegnitz, pitch wreaths
were burnt at every corner, and hundreds of boys dressed in black,
carried white wax tapers before their deceased lord. The German
Silesians grieved over the fall of the great Sclavonic dynasty, which
had once led their fathers into this land, and had first shown through
them to the world, that the union of men in a free community is more
beneficial to a country, than despotic government over slaves. But this
truth had afforded no safeguard for the lives of the lords of this
country.

CHAPTER XII.

THE GERMAN IDEAS OF THE DEVIL IN THE
SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

The phantasies of the human mind have also a history; they form and
develop themselves with the character of a people whilst they influence
it. In the century of the Reformation, these phantasies had more weight
than most earthly realities. It is the dark side of German development
which we there see, and to it is due the last place in the
characteristic features of the period of the Reformation.

In the most ancient of the Jewish records there is no mention of the
devil except in the book of Job; but at the time of Christ, Satan was
considered by the Jews as the great tempter of mankind, and as having
the power to enter into men and animals, out of which he could be
driven by the invocations of pious men. The people estimated the power
of their teachers by the authority that they exercised over the devil.
When the Christian faith spread over the western empire, the Greek and
Roman gods were looked upon as allies of the devil, and the
superstition of many who yet clung to the later worship of Rome, made
the devil the centre of their mythology.

But the conceptions which the Fathers of the Church had of the person
and power of the devil, were still more changed when the German tribes
overthrew the government of the Roman empire and adopted Christianity.
In doing so this family of people did not lose the fullness of their
own life, the highest manifestation of which was their old mythology.
It is true that the names of the old gods gradually died away; what was
obviously contrary to the new faith was at last set aside by the zeal
of the priests, by forc