THE HYSTERO-DEMONOMANIA OF THE CLOISTER.
The demonomaniacal hysteria of the Cloister, of which we have enumerated a few examples of a most remarkable kind, was present, in the Middle Ages, in the form of an epidemic neurosis, characterized by complex disturbances of the nervous system between the life of relation and of organic life; that is to say, by functional symptoms dependent on the general sensibility of the organs of sense, the active organs of movement, and the intelligence. In our observations we shall consequently recognize:
Hyperæsthesia and spasm of the stomach and abdominal organs, in the hallucination of poisoning by witches.
Hyperæsthesia of the ovary and the uterus and vagina, from the hallucination of painful cohabitation with incubi.
Spasms of the pharynx and laryngeal muscles: coughs, screams and barks of the prodromic period to convulsive attacks.
Vaso-motor disturbances, in the cutaneous marks, which are attributed to the Devil, but are simply produced by contact with some foreign body.
Somnambulism, in the execution of movements (sometimes in opposition with the laws of equilibrium), in a lucid state of mind, outside the condition of wakefulness, with or without mediumistic faculties and the conservation of memory; in the perception of sensations, without the intervention of the senses; in sensorial hallucinations produced by a simple touch; in ecstasy, with loss of tactile sense and hallucinations of vision.[75]
Suggestion, unconsciously provoked in rapid modifications of sensibility, in alterations of motility, in automatic movements executed in imitation (one form of suggestion), or by the domination of a foreign willpower, and, in general, in the penetration of an idea or phenomenon into the brain, by word, gesture, sight, or thought.[76]
Catalepsy, in the immobility of the body, the fixity of the regard, and the rigidity of the limbs in all attitudes, that we desire to place them (a very rare phenomenon).
Lethargy, in the depression of all parts of the body, and a predisposition on the part of the muscles to contract.
Delirium, finally, in the impossibility of hoping to discern false from true sensations.
We find, after this, that in analyzing the principal symptoms of hystero-demonomania, we easily note the characteristics of ordinary hysterical folly; we see that it always attacks by preference the impressionable woman. She who is fantastic, superstitious, hungry for notoriety, full of emotions,—one who possesses to the highest degree the gift of assimilation and imitation,—the subject of nightmare, nocturnal terrors, palpitations of the heart; a woman fickle in sentiment, one passing easily from joy to sadness, from chastity to lubricity,—a woman, in a word, who is capable of all manner of deceit and simulation, a natural-born deceiver.
The attacks of delirium among hystero-demonomaniacs have always a pronounced acute character; but, although violent and repeated, they are liable to disappear rapidly, and are often followed by relapse. These attacks of delirium are observed:
1. Before the convulsive attacks, under the form of melancholia or agitation, with hallucinations of sight and hearing.
2. During convulsive attacks, in the period of passional attitudes, under the most varied forms, by gestures in co-ordination with the hallucinations observed by the mind of the patient; we often see such persons express the most opposite sentiments—piety, erotism, and terror.
3. After convulsive attacks, in the form of despair, shame, rage, sadness, with an abundant shedding of tears.
4. Without convulsive attacks; in that case, the delirium may occur at any period; it is masked hysteria, which has a very great analogy to masked epilepsy.
The delirium of these patients, en resume, has for essential characteristics, exaltation of the intelligence, peculiar fixity of ideas, perversion of the sentiments, absence of will power, tendency to erotism. In a number of observations on delirium among hysterical cases in a state of hypnotism recently published, patients have been noted who believed that they cohabited with cats and monkeys, while some had hallucinations of phantoms and assassins—visions that resulted from complex hallucinations and have a certain similarity to those of hystero-demonomania observed in the Middle Ages; and, if the demons did not actually play the principle role in these hallucinations, it is because the imagination had not the anterior nourishment and belief in supernaturalism and no faith in the sexual relations of demons with mankind.
It was in 1491, about the time Jeanne Pothiere was on trial, that it was noticed that young girls in religious communities were subject to an epidemic mental affection, which led its victims to declare that they had fallen into the power of evil spirits. This species of delirium betrayed itself to the eyes of its observers by a series of strange and extravagant acts. These patients at once pretended to be able to read the future and prophesy. (See Calmeil, work cited.)
Abusive religious practices, false ideas of the future life, a tendency to mysticism, the fear of Hell and the snares of the Devil, the development of hysterical neurosis, in one subject, into suggestion inherent to imitation; such was the succinct history of the epidemic of the nuns of Cambrai. Jeanne Pothiere, their companion, denounced by them, was condemned to perpetual imprisonment, for having cohabited “434 times” (so the nuns said) with a Demon, and having introduced the lustful devil into their before peaceful convent. For it could have been nothing less than a demon that chased the poor young nuns across the fields and assisted them to climb trees, where, suspended from the branches, they were inspired to divine hidden things, to foretell the future, and be the victims of convulsions.
Sixty years later, in 1550, there suddenly occurred a great number of hystero-demonomaniacal epidemics similar to that in the convent of Cambrai. The nuns of Uvertet, following a strict fast, were attacked by divers nervous disorders. During the night they heard groans, when they burst out in peals of hysterical laughter; following this manifestation, they claimed they were lifted out of their beds by a superior force; they had, at the same time, contractions in the muscles of the limbs and of the face. They attacked each other in wild frenzy, giving and taking furious blows; at other times they were found on the ground, as though “inanimate,” and to this species of lethargy succeeded a maniacal agitation of great violence. Like the nuns of Cambrai, they climbed trees and ran over the branches as agile as so many cats, descending head downwards with feet in the air. These manifestations were, of course, attributed to a compact with the Devil, and the officers of the law, acting on the accusations of these nuns, arrested a midwife residing in the neighborhood, on the charge of witchcraft (sorcery). It is needless to add that the midwife died soon after.
A neurosis almost similar occurred the same year among the nuns at Saint Brigette’s Convent. In their attacks these nuns imitated the cries of animals and the bleating of sheep. At chapel one after the other were taken with convulsive syncope, followed by suffocation and œsophageal spasms, which sometimes persisted for the space of several days and condemned the victims to an enforced fast. This epidemic commenced after an hysterical convulsion occurred in one of the younger nuns, who had entered the convent on account of disappointment in love. Convinced that this unfortunate creature had imported a devil into the religious community, she was banished to one of the prisons of the Church.
At about this same time another epidemic of hystero-demonomania broke out at the Convent of Kintorp, near Strasbourg. These nuns insisted that they were possessed. Convulsions and muscular contractions which followed these attacks, along with delirium, were attributed to epilepsy. Progressively, and as though by contagion, all the nuns were stricken. When the hysterical attack arrived they uttered howls, like animals, then assaulted each other violently, biting with their teeth and scratching with finger-nails. Among those having convulsions the muscles of the pharynx participated in the general spasmodic condition. The attack was announced by a fetid breath and a sensation of burning at the soles of the feet. One day some of the young sisters denounced the convent cook, Elise Kame, as a sorcerer, although she suffered like the others from convulsive hysteria. This accusation finished the poor girl, who, together with her mother, was committed alive to the flames. Their death, most naturally, did not relieve the convent of the disease; the nervous malady, on the contrary, spread around in the neighborhood of the institution, attacking married women and young girls, whose imaginations were overpowered by the recital of occurrences within the convent walls.
We must admit that at that period doctors confounded hysteria with epilepsy. Spasms of the larynx, muscular contractions that we of the present day can provoke experimentally, as well as other phenomena of hysterical convulsions in somnambulic phases of hypnotism, were considered at that period only the manifest signs of diabolical possession. As to the stinking breath, which revealed the presence of the Devil among the nuns, that is a frequent symptom in grave affections of the nervous system; it is often a prodroma of an attack or series of maniacal convulsions. We have found that this fetidity of breath coincides with the nauseating odor of sweat and urine, to which we attribute the same semeological value as that of the mouth.
Another epidemic of hysterical convulsions, complicated with nymphomania, occurred at Cologne in 1554, in the Convent of Nazareth. Jean Wier, who was sent to examine these patients, recognized that the nuns were possessed by the Demon of lubricity and debauchery, who ruled this convent to a frightful extent.
P. Bodin has himself furnished the proofs; it was this author who wrote the history of erotic nuns. He remarks: “Sometimes the bestial appetites of some women lead them to believe in a demon; this occurred in the year 1566, in the Diocese of Cologne, where a dog was found which, it was claimed, was inhabited by a demon; this animal bit the religious ladies under their skirts. It was not a demon, but a natural dog. A woman who confessed to sinning with a dog was once burned at Toulouse.
“But it may be that Satan is sometimes sent by God, as certain it is that all punishment comes from him, through his means or without his means to avenge such crimes, as happened in a convent in Hesse, in Germany, where the nuns were demonomaniacs and sinned in a horrible manner with an animal.”
Thus says Bodin, the public prosecutor of sorcerers among the laity and the religious orders. Would he not have shown much greater wisdom if he had humanely judged the actions of mankind, and had condemned as social absurdities the innumerable convents and monasteries to which the fanaticism of the Middle Ages attracted so many men and women who might have followed more useful avocations? The convulsions of nymphomaniac girls were very wild, and diversified by curious movements of the pelvis, while lying in a position of dorsal decubitus, with closed eyelids. After such attacks these poor nervous nuns were perfectly prostrated, and only breathed with the greatest difficulty. It was thus with young Gertrude, who was first attacked by a convulsive neurosis which it was claimed had been induced by nymphomaniac practices in the convent, and that evil spirits possessed these nuns.
In 1609, hystero-demonomania made victims in the Convent of Saint Ursula, at Aix. Two nuns were said to be possessed; these were Madeleine de Mandoul and Loyse Capel. They were exorcised without success. Led to the Convent of Saint Baume, they denounced Louis Gaufridi, priest of the Church of Acoules of Marseilles, as being a sorcerer, who had bewitched them.
The Inquisitor Michaelis has left us the history of this trial by exorcism. These patients had all the symptoms of convulsive hysteria, with nymphomania, catalepsy, and hallucinatory delirium. This Judge, however, only saw in these manifestations the work of several demons, who tormented these nuns one after, the other, at the instigation of the priest, Louis Gaufridi, who was arrested, tried, condemned by the executioner, and led to the gallows with a rope around his neck, in bare feet, a torch in hand; thus punished, the unfortunate and innocent priest fell into a state of dementia, and while in this condition confessed that he was the author of the nuns’ demonomania.
As soon as Gaufridi had been sentenced to death by the Inquisition, the nuns of Saint Brigette’s Convent, at Lille, who had assisted at the exorcism of the nuns of Saint Ursula, in turn were attacked by hystero-demonomania. The report soon spread that they, too, were possessed, and the Inquisitor Michaelis came to Avignon to exorcise the demons. One of these nuns, Marie de Sains, suspected of sorcery, was sent to jail. Three of her companions, treated by exorcism, denounced the unfortunate girl as a witch. Marie de Sains, who, up to this time, had asserted innocence, finished by declaring herself guilty towards the rest of the nuns in the cloister. The demons found under the nuns’ beds were placed there, according to Marie’s statement, by the unfortunate Gaufridi.
She testified that, “the Devil, to recompense the priest, gave him the title of ‘Prince of Magicians;’ and promised me,” added the nun, “all kinds of sovereign honors for having consented to poison the other nuns’ minds by witchcraft. Sister Joubert, Sister Bolonais, Sister Fournier, Sister Van der Motte, Sister Launoy, and Sister Peronne, who were first to have symptoms of possession through diabolical power, soon fell under the action of the potent philter. The witchcraft was made with the host and consecrated blood, powdered billy goat horns, human bones, skulls of children, hair, finger-nails, flesh, and seminal fluid from the sorcerer; by adding to this mixture pieces of the human liver, spleen, and brain, Lucifer gave to the hideous melange a virtue of terrible strength. The sorcerers who gave this horrible concoction to their acquaintances not only destroyed them, but also a large number of new-born children.”
This unfortunate, besides, accused herself of having caused the death of a number of persons, including children, the mother, and often godmother; she claimed to have administered debilitating powders to many others. She confessed to casting an evil spell on the other nuns, which had given them over to lubricity; declared she had been to the witch vigils and cohabited with devils, and that she had also committed sodomy, had intercourse with dogs, horses, and serpents; finally, she acknowledged that she had accorded her favors to the priest, Louis Gaufridi, whereas the nun was really innocent.
Marie de Sains was found guilty of being possessed by a demon. She was exorcised and condemned to perpetual imprisonment and most austere penances by the Court of Tournay.
Immediately after the trial of Marie de Sains another nun, Simone Dourlet, was tried for the crime of sorcery, and by force of torture and suggestions, she admitted to have been at a witch vigil and was guilty. The history of this poor girl is revolting, for not only was she innocent of all crimes imputed to her, but she was not even sick. She was the victim of the hallucinations of her companions.
Another form of hystero- or hysterical demonomania was observed the same year near Dax, in the Parish of Amon, where more than 120 women were attacked by impulsive insanity, following the expression of Calmeil, but which has been designated by others as the Mal de Laira. This neurosis, which was only a variety of hysteria, was characterized by convulsions and loud barking. De L’Ancre gives an interesting description of this outbreak, but does not fail to attribute the affection to sorcerers. “It is a monstrous thing,” says he, “to see in church more than forty persons, all braying and barking like dogs, as on nights when the moon is full. This music is renewed on the entrance of every new sorcerer, who has perhaps given the disease to some other woman. These possessed creatures commence barking from the time they enter church.”
The same barking symptoms were noticed in dwellings when these witches passed along the street, and all passers by commenced to bark also when a sorcerer appeared.
The convulsions resembled those noticed in enraged insane persons. During the attack the victims would wallow on the earth, beating the ground with their bodies and limbs, turning their violence on their own persons without having will power to control their madness for evil doing. According to Calmeil their cases were rather hysterical than of an epileptic type.
A very remarkable fact in regard to this neurosis was that those women who howled were exempt from convulsions and reciprocally. These howls or barks were comparable to the cries uttered by the nuns of Kintorp and the bleatings of the sisters of Saint Brigette.
We have also the record of a German convent, where the nuns meowed like cats, and ran about the cloister imitating feline animals.
It is useless to add that the Mal de Laira was a cause of several condemnations of nuns who admitted they had bewitched their companions.[77]
Among the numerous trials for Demonidolatry, that which has been most noted was certainly the case of Urbain Grandier, and the Ursulines of Loudun, from 1632 to 1639.
The Convent of Loudun was founded in 1611 by a dame of Cose—Belfiel. Only noble ladies were received therein—Claire de Sazilli, the Demoiselles Barbezier, Madmoiselle de la Mothe, the Demoiselles D’Escoubleau, etc. These titled ladies had all received brilliant educations, but had submitted to life in a nunnery by vocation. Seven of these young women were suddenly attacked by hallucinations. They all claimed to be victims of witchcraft.
During the night these girls went in and out of the convent doors, sometimes standing on their heads, as is the case with certain individuals subject to natural somnambulism. These nuns all accused a chaplain of the order recently deceased of causing their troubles, and several of the ladies claimed that the chaplain’s ghost made shameful propositions to them.
The disease grew worse from day to day, until Justice was called on to interfere, when the nuns changed their minds and declared that the real cause of their possession was in reality one Urbain Grandier, priest to the Church of Saint Pierre of Loudun, a man distinguished for his brilliant intelligence, perfect education, but rather given to gallantry, and a desire for public notoriety.
Was it Mignon, the new chaplain of the order, who suggested to the nuns their pretended persecutor?
That was the story, but Urbain Grandier attached no importance to the rumor.
The attacks of the nuns increased more and more, however, and were complicated with catalepsy, ecstasy and nymphomania, the victims making obscene and shameful remarks. Then exorcisers were called in, but met with no success. These ladies on the contrary endeavored to provoke the priests by lascivious gestures and indecent postures. Some of them wriggled over the floor like serpents, while others moved their bodies backwards so that their heads touched their heels, a motion, according to eye-witnesses, made with the most extraordinary quickness. At times the nuns screamed and howled in unison like a chorus of wild beasts.
A historian of the time, De Le Menardy, witness de visu et de auditu, has written: “In their contortions they were as supple and easily bent as a piece of lead—in such a way that their bodies could be bent in any form—backwards, forwards and sidewise, even so the head touched the earth, and they remained in these positions up to such a time as their attitudes might be changed.” These movements were especially produced during the time of the attempted exorcisms. At the first mention of Satan “they raised up, passed their toes behind their necks, and, with legs separated, rested themselves on their perinæums and gave themselves up to indecent manual motions.” They were delirious at this time from demonomanical excitement. Madam de Belfiel claimed to be sitting on seven devils, Madam de Sazilli had ten demons under her, while Sister Elizabeth modestly asserted her number of imps to be five.
During the exorcisms these poor women fell sound asleep, which induces Calmeil to think “the condition of these women resembled closely that of magnetic somnambulists.” This supposition would permit us to explain the impossibility of the nuns telling on certain days what they had said or done during the course of a nervous attack. The days when they escaped contortions—when they were to the contrary violently exalted by the nature of these tactile and visceral sensations—they recalled too much, for the power of reflection disgusted these unfortunates with their own vile and uncontrollable acts and assertions.
This epidemic had continued fifteen months, and all the Ursuline nuns had been attacked by the epidemic when Laubardemont, one of the secret agents of the Cardinal Richelieu, arrived at Loudun to examine into the alleged Demonidolatry said to exist in the convent. The Cardinal had given this agent absolute and extended power. Urbain Grandier, who was the author of a libel against Richelieu, was arrested for complicity in this sorcery, and brought before a commission of Justices, whose members had been chosen by Laubardemont. He was confronted by the nuns, invited to exorcise them, and then subjected to most cruel tortures. Iron needle points were stuck in his skin, all over the body, in order to find anæsthetised points, which were the pretended marks of the Devil.
Notwithstanding his protestations of innocence, the Judges taking the acts of the accusers while in the poor priest’s presence, for his appearance was the signal for scenes of the most violent frenzy, condemned the man to be tied to a gallows alive. There he was subjected to renewed tortures, while the various muscles of his body were torn apart and his bones broken.
The punishment of Urbain Grandier did not put an end to the epidemic of hysterical demonomania among the Ursulines, for the malady extended to the people of the town, even to the monks who were charged with conducting the exorcisms; but the vengeance of his Red Eminence (Cardinal Richelieu) was satisfied.
Many commentaries have been made since then on this outbreak of Demonidolatry among the Ursulines. These we have no desire to reproduce nor to discuss, as it would only tend to show the ancient ignorance prevailing regarding diseases of the nervous system, and the want of character and weakness of the physicians of that epoch, together with the fanaticism of the monks and priesthood. One thing, however, appears to be worthy of remembrance; that is the analogy between the convulsive symptoms observed among the nuns and the phenomena of somnambulism described by Calmeil. This fact appears to us as so much the more remarkable, as the learned doctor of Charenton was a declared adversary of magnetism, and published his work almost half a century since—that is, in 1845.
The sleep into which the nuns fell during the period of exorcism, the forgetfulness of the scenes witnessed where they had played such a role, are, to our mind, only phenomena of hypnotism, and the resemblance is so strong that we do not believe it would be impossible to artificially reproduce another epidemic of hysterical demonomania.
Let us for an instant accept the hypothesis of a convent, where twenty young nuns are confined. Of these at least ten will be subject to hypnotism. Let us now admit that these recluses, living the ordinary ascetic and virtuous life of the cloister, plunged deeply in the mysticisms of the Catholic faith, receive one day as confessor and spiritual director a man of energetic character, knowing all the practices of hypnotism and of suggestion—a disciple let us say of Puel, Charcot, De Luys, Barety, Bernheim—a perfect neurologist. Now, if this man cared to magnetize individually each of these nuns in the silence and obscurity of the confessional, and should then suggest to them that they were possessed by all the demons known to sorcery, what would occur? Let us suppose again that he should carry his physiological power further and put his subjects into an ecstacy, catalepsy or lethargy—into a condition where marked hallucinations might occur and nervous excitation be provoked, how long would it be before this man could make these women similar to those who once lived in the convent of the Ursulines at Loudun?
We have not admitted this fiction for the purpose of having any one conclude that the possessed of Loudun were the mere playthings of some person who used hypnotism in an interest that we ignore; but, if this fact may be considered possible by the will of an individual, who can affirm at this day that there does not exist an unknown force, intelligent or not, capable of producing the same pathological phenomena observed long ago? What we call, in 1888, hypnotism in the amphitheatres of our universities, we reserve for another chapter, where we will give revelations much more extraordinary, and also more supernatural; our chapter on the neurology of the nineteenth century will, we promise, be very interesting.
Let us yet remark that the hystero-demonomaniacal manifestations were not peculiar to the Ursulines of Loudun. They have been observed in many convents in the same conditions of habits and prolonged fastings among debilitated young girls; from long vigils spent in prayer and nervous depression, caused by over-religious discipline; by mystical exhortations from a man invested in a sacred character, on whom fall all the discussions, all the entreaties, and all the thoughts of the girls in the cloister.
The history of the nuns of Loudun was identically reproduced under the same conditions among the sisters of Saint Elizabeth’s Convent at Louviers, in 1643, three years after the execution of poor Urbain Grandier for witchcraft.
In a short time eighteen nuns were attacked with hysterical demonomania; they had active hallucinations of all the senses, convulsions, and delirium. Like the Ursulines, they blasphemed, screamed, and gave themselves over to all manner of strange contortions, claiming to be possessed by demons, describing in obscene terms the orgies of the witch vigil (Sabbat), perpetrating all varieties of debauchery, even unknown to the vilest prostitutes; after this they finally accused one or more persons of bewitching them through sorcery.
The nuns of Louviers, for instance, after being duly exorcised according to the Canons of the Church, accused as the author of their affliction, and as a bad magician, their old time confessor, the Abbot Picard, who died before their symptoms were developed; then they accused another priest, by the name of Francois Boulle, and several of their companions, notably Sister Madeleine Bavan. These innocent people were tried by the Parliament of Rouen, who ordered that the body of the priest, Picard, should be exhumed, carried to the stake, there tied to the living body of Francois Boulle, and after being burnt their ashes should be cast to the winds. This execution, in the open air, occurred in the seventeenth century, in the “Old Market Place” at Rouen, at the spot where Joan d’Arc had also been burnt alive for being possessed, as was claimed, by supernatural beings. What a comment on intelligence in an age of partial enlightenment!
In order to close this chapter on hysterical demonomania among religious orders, of which we have given some examples, we shall cite an interesting relation left us by the Bishops and Doctors of Sorbonne, together with the testimony of the King’s deputies, regarding the possession of nuns at the Convent of Auxonne. Here there were always convulsions and screams, with blasphemy, aversion to taking the sacraments, possession, and exorcisms; and there was, undoubtedly, the phenomenon of suggestion observed with much precision.
We might say that the nuns of Auxonne were accessible to suggestion; for, at the command or even the thought of the exorcists, they fell into a condition of somnambulism; in this state they became insensible to pain, as was determined by pricking Sister Denise under the finger-nail with a needle; they had also the faculty of prosternating the body, making it assume the form of a circle,—in other words, they could bend their limbs in any direction.
The Bishop of Chalons reports that “all the before mentioned girls, secular as well as regular, to the number of eighteen, had the gift of Language, and responded to the exorcists in Latin, making, at times, their entire conversation in the classical tongue.
“Almost all these nuns had a full knowledge of the secrets and inner thoughts of others;[78] this was demonstrated particularly in the interior commandments, which had been made by the exorcists on different occasions, which they obeyed exactly ordinarily, without the commandments being expressed to them either by words or any external sign.
“The Bishop himself, among others, experimented on the person of Denise Pariset, to whom, giving a command mentally to come to him immediately and be exorcised, whereupon the aforesaid nun immediately came to him, although her residence was in a quarter of the village far removed from the Episcopal residence. She said on these occasions that she was commanded to come; and this experiment was repeated several times.
“Again, in the person of Sister Jamin, a novice, who on hearing the exorcism, told the Bishop his interior commandment made to the Demon during the ceremony. Also, in the person of Sister Borthon, who, being commanded mentally to make her agitations violent, immediately prostrated herself before the Holy Sacrament, with her belly against the earth and her arms extended, executing the command at the same instant, with a promptitude and precipitation wholly extraordinary.”[79]
Here, I believe, are facts so well authenticated of transmission of thought or of mental suggestions, perhaps voluntarily unknown to certain modern neurologists. These neuropaths of Auxonne presented still more extraordinary phenomena; at the word of command they suspended the pulsations of the pulse in an arm, in the right arm, for example, and transfered the beatings from the right arm to the left arm, and vice versa. This fact was discovered by the Bishop, and many ecclesiastics verified the same, and “it was promptly done in the presence of Doctor Morel, who recognized and makes oath to the fact.”
We cannot dwell too long on the Demonomania of the Middle Ages, to which we have, perhaps, added some historical facts which are new and which we believe it to be our duty to publish, seeing a connection with modern hypnotism. We shall thus open a new field for investigation on strange affections, classed up to the present time in all varieties of monomania, but which appear to us to belong to a variety of mental pathology independent of insanity, properly speaking. If it were otherwise it would be necessary to recognize as crazy persons, not only the Demonomaniacs of the Middle Ages, but also the Jansenists, who went into trances, and the choreics and convulsionists (convulsionnaires) of the eighteenth century. They were certainly not crazy, those who came to the mortuary of Saint Medard, to the tomb of the Deacon Paris, to make an appeal against the Papal bull of Clement XI. And was it not another cause than auto suggestion, to which it is necessary to attribute the nervous phenomena that the appelants exhibited during thirty consecutive years?
The exaltation of religious ideas, so often advanced by psychologists, cannot account for these phenomena. I have seen palpable proofs of this in the various accidents that suddenly overcame sceptics and strong-minded men of modern times, who came as amateurs to assist at the experiments on convulsive subjects. These symptoms, as is well known, are usually ushered in by violent screams, rapid beatings of the heart, contractions of muscles, and analogous nervous symptoms.
Besides, it is incontestible that many patients and infirm people obtain an unhoped for cure following convulsive cries; while others, in a state of health, are taken with hallucinations and delirium. I have seen patients who would lacerate certain portions of the body that were the seat of burns, and continue to walk, cry, gesticulate, and abuse themselves, like insane persons in a real state of dementia.
The Jansenists did not speak, had no compacts with demons, no exorcisms at which Inquisitors and their acolytes could suggest ideas of demonomania; and notwithstanding their great austerities and the most rigorous fasts, we note among the convulsionnaires of Saint Medard only the ideas of possession by the Holy Spirit and divine favors obtained through the protection of the kind-hearted Deacon; and meantime, those possessed by God, as by the Devil, were subjects of somnambulism, to trances, lethargy, catalepsy, and other phenomena.[80]
The last analogy, finally, between the two nervous epidemics, was the Royal authority, a special form of suggestion in the Middle Ages, which put an end to sorcery or witchcraft as well as to Jansenism.