The evil eye. An account of this ancient and wide spread superstition

3o6 THE EVIL EYE chap.
sion. Moreover, ex voios, when intended simply as
such, were in old times generally mutilated or
broken, and the writer has never seen or heard of a
bronze one/^^ These hands were therefore intended
to be placed somewhere in the house, and not in the
temple. Further, all have a number of objects upon
them, each in itself a well-known amulet, specially used
against the evil eye, and fashioned in a very lasting
material. All these devices would be useless and
meaningless upon a mere ex voto, which in old days,
as now, we know to have been some single object
an arm, a leg, a breast, or an ear—representing in
itself more or less accurately the benefit received or
the member healed. Moreover, we have the com-
plete analogy of compounded and complicated
amulets in the many gems and medals among the
ancients, while among the moderns we have the
striking example of the Cimaruta in its manifold
forms. Of this latter, Jahn never seems to have
483 We have seen how Chinese kill their money, and other people the
arms offered to the dead. The following shows a continuance of the custom
among Europeans :
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At Isernia in the Terra di Lavoro, during 1780, at the church of SS.
Cosmo and Damian especially, but also " Nella fiera ed in Citta vi sono
molti divoti, che vendono membri virili di cera di diverse forme, e di tutte
grandezze fino un palmo.
«' Sopra delle tavole in ogn' una vi e un bacile che serve per raccogliere li
membri di cera. Questa divozione e tutta quasi delle Donne, e pochissima
quelli, o quelle che presentano gambe e braccia, mentre tutta la gran festa
s'aggira a profitto di membri della generazione. lo ho inteso dire una
donna ' Santo Cosimo benedetto, cosl lo voglio,' etc.
These offerings of wax were received by a priest, who said in response to
" Per intercessionem beati Cosmi, liberet te ab omni malo " (Payne
each gift :
Knight, Worship of Priapus, 1865, p. lo). The strange part of this business
was that all these wax figures thus offered to SS. Cosmo and Damian were
broken before being placed in the basket. The actual breaking of the gift
was part of the devotional oflering.
It is said (Murray's Handbook lo Southern Italy, 1868, p. 52) that the sale
of the objectionable membri was prohibited by the Government in 1780, but
ten years later than that Sir R. Colt Hoare was able to procure these specimens
of the forbidden emblems. Similar ones, though of the classic period
seventeen centuries earlier, are to be seen at the Naples Museum.
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