Mr. Myers concludes that ‘it does not seem worth while, as a rule, to examine the testimony to physical marvels occurring in the presence of professional mediums’. He therefore collects evidence in the article quoted, for physical marvels occurring where there is no paid medium. Here, as in the business of levitation, the interest of the anthropologist and mythologist lies in the uniformity and identity of narratives from all countries, climates, and ages. Among the earliest rappings with which we chance to be familiar are those reported by Froissart in the case of the spirit Orthon, in the fourteenth century. The tale had become almost a fabliau, but any one who reads the amusing chapter will see that it is based on a belief in disturbances like those familiar to Glanvill and the Misses Fox. Cieza de Leon (1549) in the passage already quoted, where he describes the levitated Cacique of Pirza in Popyan, adds that ‘the Christians saw stones falling from the air’ (as in the Greatrakes tale of the Youghal witch), and declares that, ‘when the chief was sitting with a glass of liquor before him, the Christians saw the glass raised up in the air and put down empty, and a short time afterwards the wine was again poured into the cup from the air’. Mr. Home once equalled this marvel, [{109a}] and Ibn Batuta reports similar occurrences, earlier, at the court of the King of Delhi. There is another case in Histoire Prodigieuse d’une jeune Fille agitée d’un Esprit fantastique et invisible. [{109b}] A bourgeois of Bonneval was beset by a rapping rattle of a sprite. ‘At dinner, when he would lay his hand on a trencher, it was carried off elsewhere, and the wineglass, when he was about drinking, was snatched from his hand.’ So Mr. Wesley’s trencher was set spinning on the table, when nobody touched it! In such affairs we may have the origin of the story of the Harpies at the court of Phineus.
In China, Mr. Dennys tells how ‘food placed on the table vanished mysteriously, and many of the curious phenomena attributed to ghostly interference took place,’ so that the householder was driven from house to house, and finally into a temple, in 1874, and all this after the death of a favourite but aggrieved monkey! [{110a}] ‘Throwing down crockery, trampling on the floor, etc.—such pranks as have attracted attention at home, are not unknown. . . . I must confess that in China, as elsewhere, these occurrences leave a bonâ fide impression of the marvellous which can neither be explained nor rejected’. [{110b}]
We have now noted these alleged phenomena, literally ‘from China to Peru’. Let us next take an old French case of a noisy sprite in the nunnery of St. Pierre de Lyon. The account is by Adrien de Montalembert, almoner to Francis I. [{110c}] The Bibliography of this very rare tract is curious and deserves attention. When Lenglet Dufresnoy was compiling, in 1751, his Dissertations sur les Apparitions he reprinted the tract from the Paris quarto of 1528, in black letter. This example had been in the Tellier collection, and Dufresnoy seems to have borrowed it from the Royal Convent of St. Geneviève. Knowing that Cardinal Tencin had some acquaintance with the subject, Dufresnoy wrote to him, and publishes (vol. i. cxli.) his answer, dated October 18, 1751, Lyons. The cardinal replied that, besides the Paris edition of 1528, there was a Rouen reprint, of 1529, by Rolin Gautier, with engravings. Brunet says, that there are engravings in the Paris edition of 1528, perhaps these were absent from the Tellier example. That of Rouen, which Cardinal Tencin collated, was in the Abbey of St. Peter, in Lyons. Some leaves had been thumbed out of existence, and their place was supplied in manuscript. The only difference was in chapter xxviii. where the printed Rouen text may have varied. In the MS. at all events, it is stated that on March 21, the spirit of Sister Alix de Telieux struck thirty-three great strokes on the refectory of her convent, ‘mighty and marvellous,’ implying that her thirty-three years of purgatory were commuted into thirty-three days. A bright light, scarcely endurable, then appeared, and remained for some eight minutes. The nuns then went into chapel and sang a Te Deum.
At the end of the volume, a later hand added, in manuscript, that the truth of the contemporary record was confirmed by the tradition of the oldest sisters who had received it from eye-witnesses of the earlier generation. The writer says that she had great difficulty in finding the printed copy, but that when young, in 1630, she received the tale from a nun, then aged ninety-four. This nun would be born in 1536, ten years after these events. She got the story from her aunt, a nun, Gabrielle de Beaudeduit, qui étoit de ce tems-la. There is no doubt that the sisters firmly and piously believed in the story, which has the contemporary evidence of Adrien de Montalembert. Dufresnoy learned that a manuscript copy of the tract was in the library of the Jesuits of Lyons. He was unaware of an edition in 12mo of 1580, cited by Brunet.
To come to the story, one of our earliest examples of a ‘medium,’ and of communications by raps. The nunnery was reformed in 1516. A pretty sister, Alix de Telieux, fled with some of the jewels, lived a ‘gay’ life, and died wretchedly in 1524. She it was, as is believed, who haunted a sister named Anthoinette de Grolée, a girl of eighteen. The disturbance began with a confused half-dream. The girl fancied that the sign of the cross was made on her brow, and a kiss impressed on her lips, as she wakened one night. She thought this was mere illusion, but presently, when she got up, she heard, ‘comme soubs ses pieds frapper aucuns petis coups,’ ‘rappings,’ as if at the depth of four inches underground. This was exactly what occurred to Miss Hetty Wesley, at Epworth, in 1716, and at Rio de Janeiro to a child named ‘C.’ in Professor Alexander’s narrative. [{112}] Montalembert says, in 1528, ‘I have heard these rappings many a time, and, in reply to my questions, so many strokes as I asked for were given’. Montalembert received information (by way of raps) from the ‘spirit,’ about matters of importance, qui ne pourroient estre cogneus de mortelle créature. ‘Certainly,’ as he adds, ‘people have the best right to believe these things who have seen and heard them.’
The rites of the Church were conferred in the most handsome manner on the body of Sister Alix, which was disinterred and buried in her convent. Exorcisms and interrogations of the spirit were practised. It merely answered questions by rapping ‘Yes,’ or ‘No’. On one occasion Sister Anthoinette was ‘levitated’. Finally, the spirit appeared bodily to her, said farewell, and disappeared after making an extraordinary fracas at matins. Montalembert conducted the religious ceremonies. One case of hysteria was developed; the sufferer was a novice. Of course it was attributed to diabolical possession The whole story in its pleasant old French, has an agreeable air of good faith But what interests us is the remarkable analogy between the Lyons rappings and those at Epworth, Tedworth, and countless other cases, old or of yesterday. We can now establish a catena of rappings and pour prendre date, can say that communications were established, through raps, with a so-called ‘spirit,’ more than three hundred years before the ‘Rochester knockings’ in America. Very probably wider research would discover instances prior to that of Lyons; indeed, Wierus, in De Praestigiis Daemonum, writes as if the custom was common.
It is usual to explain the raps by a theory that the ‘medium’ produces them through cracking his, or her, knee-joints. It may thus be argued that Sister Anthoinette discovered this trick, or was taught the trick, and that the tradition of her performance, being widely circulated in Montalembert’s quarto, and by oral report, inspired later rappers, such as Miss Kate Fox, Miss ‘C.’ Davis, Miss Hetty Wesley, the gentlewoman at Mr. Paschal’s, Mr. Mompesson’s ‘modest little girls,’ Daniel Home, and Miss Margaret Wilson of Galashiels. Miss Wilson’s uncle came one day to Mr. Wilkie, the minister, and told him the devil was at his house, for, said he, ‘there is an odd knocking about the bed where my niece lies’. Whereupon the minister went with him, and found it so. ‘She, rising from her bed, sat down to supper, and from below there was such a knocking up as bred fear to all that were present. This knocking was just under her chair, where it was not possible for any mortal to knock up.’ When Miss Wilson went to bed, and was in a deep sleep, ‘her body was so lifted up that many strong men were not able to keep it down’. [{114a}] The explanation about cracking the knee-joints hardly covers the levitations, or accounts for the tremendous noise which surrounded Sister Anthoinette at matins, or for the bright light, a common spiritualistic phenomenon. Margaret Wilson was about twelve years of age. If it be alleged that little girls have a traditional method of imposture, even that is a curious and interesting fact in human nature.
As regards imposture, there exists a singular record of a legal process in Paris, 1534. [{114b}]
It may have been observed that the Lyons affair was useful to the Church, as against ‘the damnable sect of Lutherans,’ because Sister Alix attested the existence of purgatory. No imposture was detected, and no reader of Montalembert can doubt his good faith, nor the sincerity of his kindness and piety. But such a set of circumstances might provoke imitation. Of fraudulent imitation the Franciscans of Orleans were accused, and for this crime they were severely punished. We have the Arrest des Commissaires du Conseil d’État du Roi, from MS. 7170, A. of the Bibliothèque du Roi. [{115}] We have also allusions in the Franciscanus, a satire in Latin hexameter by George Buchanan. Finally, we have versions in Lavaterus, and in Wierus, De Curat. Laes. Maleficio (Amsterdam, 1660, p. 422). Wierus, born 1515, heard the story when with Sleidan at Orleans, some years after the events. He gives the version of Sleidan, a notably Protestant version. Wierus is famous for his spirited and valuable defence of the poor women then so frequently burned as witches. He either does, or pretends to believe in devils, diabolical possession, and exorcism, but the exorcist, to be respectable, must be Protestant. Probably Wierus was not so credulous as he assumes to be, and a point of irony frequently peeps out. The story as told by Sleidan differs from that in the official record. In this document Adam Fumée counsellor of the king, announces that the Franciscans of Orleans have informed the king that they are vexed by a spirit, which gives itself out by signs (rappings), as the wife of François de St. Mesmin, Provost of Orleans. They ask the king to take cognisance of the matter. On the other side, St. Mesmin declares that the Franciscans have counterfeited the affair in hope of ‘black-mailing’ him. The king, therefore, appoints Fumée to inquire into the case. Thirteen friars are lying in prison in Paris, where they have long been ‘in great wretchedness and poverty, and perishing of hunger,’ a pretty example of the law’s delay. A commission is to try the case (November, 1534). The trouble had begun on February 22, 1533 (old style), when Father Pierre d’Arras at five a.m. was called into the dormitory of ‘les enfans,’—novices,—with holy water and everything proper. Knocking was going on, and by a system of knocks, the spirit said it wanted its body to be taken out of holy ground, said it was Madame St Mesmin, and was damned for Lutheranism and extravagance! The experiment was repeated before churchmen and laymen, but the lay observers rushed up to the place whence the knocks came where they found nothing. They hid some one there, after which there was no knocking. On a later day, the noises as in Cock Lane and elsewhere, began by scratching. “M. l’Official,” the bishop’s vicar, ‘ouit gratter, qui etoit le commencement de ladite accoutummée tumulte dudit Esprit’. But no replies were given to questions, which the Franciscans attributed to the disturbance of the day before, and the breaking into various places by the people. One Alicourt seems to have been regarded as the ‘medium,’ and the sounds were heard as in Cock Lane and at Tedworth when he was in bed. Later experiments gave no results, and the friars were severely punished, and obliged to recant their charges against Madame de Mesmin. The case, scratches, raps, false accusations and all, is parallel to that of the mendacious ‘Scratching Fanny,’ examined by Dr. Johnson and Douglas, Bishop of Salisbury. In that affair the child was driven by threats to make counterfeit noises, but, as to the method of imposture at Orleans, nothing is said in the contemporary legal document.
We now turn to the account by Sleidan, in Wierus. The provost’s wife had left directions for a cheap funeral in the Franciscan Church. This economy irritated the Fathers, who only got six pieces of gold, ‘having expected much greater plunder’. ‘Colimannus’ (Colimant), an exorcist named in the process, was the ringleader. They stationed a lad in the roof of the church, who rapped with a piece of wood, and made a great noise ‘when they mumbled their prayers at night’. St. Mesmin appealed to the king, the Fathers were imprisoned, and the youth was kept in Fumée’s house, and plied with questions. He confessed the trick, and the friars were punished. Of all this confession, and of the mode of imposture, nothing is said in the legal process. From the whole affair came a popular saying, c’est l’esprit d’Orléans, when any fable was told. Buchanan talks of cauta parum pietas in fraude paranda.