In Christian and Mediæval Times

14 pages in this part of The Honey-Makers.

THE bee of the Middle Ages is a sombre bee. It does not fly joyously through light-hearted love-songs, but rather lends itself to purposes…

The Fathers of the Church, Saint Jerome, Saint Basil, Tertullian, and others got from the bee many and varied allegorical references to the…

Honey, which in the pagan world everywhere symbolized the pleasures of the senses, in the Christian world became ( symbolical of the…

And again, - "O Lord Jesus, give to me gifts Such as the wise bees have, Since I have reconciled myself to thee In Christian and Mediæval…

There was also a remarkable blessing to be pronounced over bees, found upon the cover of a book dated 1570, in a certain library in…

These bee-myths of the Middle Ages had a symbolical meaning that at the present time they have lost, though a certain superstitious feeling…

Bees, as ministers of the Church, were not exempt from obedience to divine law.

In Germany and neighboring countries, the form of that portion of the body affected by disease was moulded in wax and placed in the church…

But all too soon this simple act of faith changed to the pagan magic. The science of "Azman," practised by means of a waxen goblin, became…

There were ways of escaping from the evil threatened by the Atzman, one of which the following story from the "Gesta Romanorum"…

Then he took him home, prepared for him a bath of water, put him in it, gave into his hand a mirror, and said, "Look therein!"

Naturally this practice of magic by means of wax extended far beyond the churchly bounds, and we learn that the Slavic people used it in…

In a Wallachian legend the bee appears as a messenger of God, sent by him, when he was in the act of making the world, to the Devil to ask…

The Poles, Silesians, and Russians generally, had a beegod called Babilos who was credited with being the inventor of the art of…