Catherine Emmerich, the most remarkable of the three, began very early to have visions, and to display unusual endowments. She was very pious; could distinguish the qualities of plants, reveal secrets or distant circumstances, and knew people’s thoughts; but was, however, extremely sickly, and exhibited a variety of extraordinary and distressing symptoms, which terminated in her death. The wounds of the crown of thorns round her head, and those of the nails in her hands and feet, were as perfect as if painted by an artist, and they bled regularly on Fridays. There was also a double cross on her breast. When the blood was wiped away, the marks looked like the puncture of flies. She seldom took any nourishment but water; and, having been but a poor cow-keeper, she discoursed, when in the ecstatic state, as if inspired.
I am well aware that on reading this, many persons who never saw her, will say it was all imposture. It is very easy to say this; but it is as absurd as presumptuous to pronounce on what they have had no opportunity of observing. I never saw these women either; but I find myself much more disposed to accept the evidence of those who did, than of those who only “do not believe, because they do not believe.”
Neither Catherine Emmerich nor the others made their sufferings a source of profit, nor had they any desire to be exhibited—but quite the contrary. She could see in the dark as well as the light, and frequently worked all night at making clothes for the poor, without lamp or candle.
There have been instances of magnetic patients being stigmatized in this manner. Madame B. von N—— dreamed one night that a person offered her a red and a white rose, and that she chose the latter. On awaking she felt a burning pain in her arm, and by degrees there arose there the figure of a rose perfect in form and color. It was rather raised above the skin. The mark increased in intensity till the eighth day, after which it faded away, and by the fourteenth was no longer perceptible.
A letter from Moscow, addressed to Dr. Kerner, in consequence of reading the account of the “Nun of Dulmen,” relates a still more extraordinary case. At the time of the French invasion, a Cossack having pursued a Frenchman into a cul de sac—an alley without an outlet—there ensued a terrible conflict between them, in which the latter was severely wounded. A person who had taken refuge in this close and could not get away, was so dreadfully frightened, that when he reached home, there broke out on his body the very same wounds that the Cossack had inflicted on his enemy!
The signatures of the fœtus are analogous facts; and if the mind of the mother can thus act on another organism, why not the minds of the saints, or of Catherine Emmerich, on their own? From the influence of the mother on the child, we have but one step to that asserted to be possible between two organisms not visibly connected for the difficulty therein lies, that we do not see the link that connects them, though doubtless it exists. Dr. Blacklock, who lost his eyesight at an early period, said that, when awake, he distinguished persons by hearing and feeling them; but when asleep, he had a distinct impression of another sense. He then seemed to himself united to them by a kind of distant contact, which was effected by threads passing from their bodies to his, which seems to be but a metaphorical expression of the fact; for, whether the connection be maintained by an all-pervading ether, or be purely dynamic, that the intertraction exists between both organic and inorganic bodies, is made evident wherever there is sufficient excitability to render the effects sensible.
Till very lately, the powers of the divining-rod were considered a mere fable; yet, that this power exists, though not in the rod, but in the person that holds it, is now perfectly well established. Count Tristan, who has written a book on the subject, says that about one in forty have it, and that a complete course of experiments has proved the phenomenon to be electric. The rod seems to serve, in some degree, the same purpose as the magical mirror and conjurations, and it is also serviceable in presenting a result visible to the eye of the spectator. But numerous cases are met with, in which metals or water are perceived beneath the surface of the earth, without the intervention of the rod. A man, called Bleton, from Dauphiny, possessed this divining power in a remarkable degree, as did a Swiss girl, called Katherine Beutler. She was strong and healthy, and of a phlegmatic temperament, yet so susceptible of these influences that, without the rod, she pointed out and traced the course of water, veins of metal, coal-beds, salt-mines, &c. The sensations produced were sometimes on the soles of her feet, sometimes on her tongue, or in her stomach. She never lost the power wholly, but it varied considerably in intensity at different times, as it did with Bleton. She was also rendered sensible of the bodily pains of others, by laying her hand on the affected part, or near it; and she performed several magnetic cures.
A person now alive, named Dussange, in the Maçonnés, possesses this power. He is a simple, honest man, who can give no account of his own faculty. The Abbés Chatelard and Paramelle can also discover subterraneous springs; but they say it is effected by means of their geological science. Monsieur D——, of Cluny, however, found the faculty of Dussange much more to be relied on. The Greeks and Romans made hydroscopy an art; and there are works alluded to as having existed on this subject, especially one by Marcellus. The caduceus of Mercury, the wand of Circe, and the wands of the Egyptian sorcerers, show that the wand or rod was always looked upon as a symbol of divination. One of the most remarkable instances of the use of the divining-rod, is that of Jacques Aymar.
On the 5th of July, 1692, a man and his wife were murdered in a cellar at Lyons, and their house was robbed. Having no clew whatever to the criminal, this peasant, who had the reputation of being able to discover murderers, thieves, and stolen articles, by means of the divining-rod, was sent for from Dauphiny. Aymar undertook to follow the footsteps of the assassins, but he said he must first be taken into the cellar where the murder was committed. The procurator royal conducted him thither; and they gave him a rod out of the first wood that came to hand. He walked about the cellar, but the rod did not move till he came to the spot where the man had been killed. Then Aymar became agitated, and his pulse beat as if he were in a high fever; and all these symptoms were augmented when he approached the spot on which they had found the body of the woman. From this, he, of his own accord, went into a sort of shop where the robbery had been committed; thence he proceeded into the street, tracing the assassin, step by step, first to the court of the archbishop’s palace, then out of the city, and along the right side of the river. He was escorted all the way by three persons appointed for the purpose, who all testified that sometimes he detected the traces of three accomplices, sometimes only of two. He led the way to the house of a gardener, where he insisted that they had touched a table and one of three bottles that were yet standing upon it. It was at first denied; but two children, of nine or ten years old, said that three men had been there, and had been served with wine in that bottle. Aymar then traced them to the river where they had embarked in a boat; and, what is very extraordinary, he tracked them as surely on the water as on the land. He followed them wherever they had gone ashore, went straight to the places they had lodged at, pointed out their beds, and the very utensils of every description that they had used. On arriving at Sablon, where some troops were encamped, the rod and his own sensations satisfied him that the assassins were there; but fearing the soldiers would ill treat him, he refused to pursue the enterprise further, and returned to Lyons. He was, however, promised protection, and sent back by water, with letters of recommendation. On reaching Sablon, he said they were no longer there; but he tracked them into Languedoc, entering every house they had stopped at, till he at length reached the gate of the prison, in the town of Beaucaire, where he said one of them would be found. They brought all the prisoners before him, amounting to fifteen; and the only one his rod turned on was a little Bossu, or deformed man, who had just been brought in for a petty theft. He then ascertained that the two others had taken the road to Nimes, and offered to follow them; but as the man denied all knowledge of the murder, and declared he had never been at Lyons, it was thought best that they should return there; and as they went the way they had come, and stopped at the same houses, where he was recognised, he at length confessed that he had travelled with two men who had engaged him to assist in the crime. What is very remarkable, it was found necessary that Jacques Aymar should walk in front of the criminal, for when he followed him he became violently sick. From Lyons to Beaucaire is forty-five miles.
As the confession of the Bossu confirmed all Aymar had asserted, the affair now created an immense sensation; and a great variety of experiments were instituted, every one of which proved perfectly satisfactory. Moreover, two gentlemen, one of them the controller of the customs, were discovered to possess this faculty, though in a minor degree. They now took Aymar back to Beaucaire, that he might trace the other two criminals; and he went straight again to the prison-gate, where he said that now another would be found. On inquiry, however, it was discovered that a man had been there to inquire for the Bossu, but was gone again. He then followed them to Toulon, and finally to the frontier of Spain, which set a limit to further researches. He was often so faint and overcome with the effluvia, or whatever it was that guided him, that the perspiration streamed from his brow, and they were obliged to sprinkle him with water to prevent his fainting.