The opinion of his holiness attracted an enormous crowd to his funeral. A Jesuit pronounced his funeral elogy, and a worthy epitaph was engraved on his tomb.
Another matter that should be mentioned is that when Extreme Unction was administered to him, the devils, driven away by the sacrament, were forced to leave him. But they did not go far; for they entered the body of another excellent monk who was present, and whom they possessed henceforward. They vexed him at first by violent contortions and horrible howlings, and at the moment of Tranquille's death they cried horribly, "He is dead;" as if they would say, "It is all over, no more hope of this soul!" At the same time, casting themselves on the other monk, they worked him so horribly that, in spite of the many that held him, he kept kicking in the most violent manner towards the deceased. He had to be carried away.
Father Surin, a Jesuit, had succeeded Father Lactance; he too had his trials.
The demons used to threaten him out of the mouth of the Mother Superior, who was under his care. Once, in the presence of the Bishop of Nimes, the demon took up his position on the face of the nun; suddenly he disappeared and attacked the father, made him grow pale, sat on his chest, and stopped his voice; but soon, obeying the order of another exorcist, he returned to the nun, spoke through her mouth, and showed himself extremely hideous and horrible on her face; and the father, returning to the fight, continued his duties as if he had never been attacked. In one afternoon he was thus attacked and released seven or eight times; but these assaults were followed by others still more violent, so that in his exorcisms he seemed to be struck with violent interior blows, borne to earth, and violently shaken by his adversary; he remained in this state sometimes half an hour, sometimes an hour. The other exorcists applied the Holy Sacrament to the places where he felt the demons, sometimes to his chest, sometimes to his head. When the devil left him he reappeared on the face of the mother, where the monk, with holy vengeance, pursued him, and constrained him to adore the Holy Sacrament. Once the devil threw him out of a window on to the rock where stands the convent of the Jesuits, and broke one of his thighs. After having sustained during many years with perfect patience and resignation these terrible trials, he was freed from them, and at length died in the odour of sanctity.
As to the Mother Superior, towards the end of the year 1635, something happened to her of a most extraordinary nature. Lord Montague came to Loudun, accompanied by two other English noblemen. He brought the exorcists a letter from the Archbishop of Tours, ordering them to edify his Lordship as much as possible. The Superior, in the midst of a convulsion, stretched out her left arm, and the name of Joseph appeared on it written in capital letters. The report of this event was signed by the English noblemen. Lord Montague hastened to Rome, abjured his heresy, embraced the ecclesiastical career, and, under another name, settled in France, where he lived many years. He is mentioned in the memoirs of Madame de Motteville.
At the beginning of 1636, on Twelfth Night, Father Surin resolved to compel the last demon that remained in the Mother Superior to adore Jesus Christ. He had the lady tied to a bench. The exorcisms drove the demon into a fury; and instead of obeying, he vomited a multitude of maledictions and blasphemies against the three persons of the Holy Trinity, against Jesus Christ, and against his Holy Mother, so execrable that one would be horrified to read them. The father knew that he was about to come out, and had the lady unbound. After tremblings, contortions, and horrible howlings, Father Surin pressed him more and more with the Holy Sacrament in his hand, and ordered him in Latin to write the name of Mary on the lady's hand. Raising her left arm into the air, the fiend redoubled his cries and howls, and in a last convulsion issued from the lady, leaving on her hand the holy name Maria, in letters so perfectly formed that no human hand could imitate them. The lady felt herself free and full of joy; and a Te Deum was sung in honour of the event.
Such is the true story of the possession of the nuns of Loudun and of the condemnation of Urbain Grandier, so different from the false accounts hitherto published. Even those who do not blush to deny the truth of infernal possessions need only notice that the human race has always believed, and still believes, that there are intelligent creatures in existence other than man, and almost similar to those whom the Pagans have always represented as Gods of Evil, or subterranean genii, like the demons believed in by Christians; and the belief in infernal possession, having in it no longer anything repugnant, will seem at once to them not only possible but probable. To believe that Urbain Grandier was unjustly condemned and executed, we must blindly believe hundreds of things which revolt common sense. One of the Protestant writers, for example, after having said in a thousand different ways that the possession of the nuns of Loudun was a mere imposture and horrible farce, confesses that it is impossible to conceive human beings, and especially women, driving a priest to a horrible death by such a series of feigned possessions.
FOOTNOTES:
[12] Boot or Bootikin, an instrument of judicial torture formerly used as a means of extorting confessions or evidence. It was originally brought from Russia, and consisted of a narrow wooden box made by nailing four planks together, and the leg of the prisoner being placed in it, wedges were inserted between the calf of the leg and the sides of the box, and struck home with a mallet. Sometimes a case of iron was used in a similar way, and occasionally the wedges were placed against the shin bone. The torture, which was of the most horrible character, was sometimes administered until the limbs were wholly crushed and rendered for ever useless. In the judicial records of Scotland there are many instances given of the application of the boot, and some of the details are of the most revolting character. It was last used in 1690, when an English gentleman named Neville Payne was, by the express command of William III., submitted to the torture of the thumb-screw and boot, and which in his case were applied with fearful severity. It is believed that all judicial torture had been given up in England about fifty years previous to this, and it was finally abolished by 7 Anne, c. 20.
[13] "There have been many found in whom such characters have concurred, as by the observation of all ages and nations, are symptoms of a witch; particularly the witch's marks, mala fama, inability to shed tears, etc., all of them providential discoveries of so dark a crime, and which, like avenues, lead us to the secret of it. 'Tis true, one man, through the concurrence of corrosive humours, may have an insensible mark, another may be enviously defamed, and a third, through sudden grief or melancholy, not be able to weep. One or other of these may concurr in the innocent, but none do attest that all of them have concurred in any one person but a witch; and 'tis reasonable to think that these indicia taking place in witches through all places in the world, do proceed from a common cause, rather than a peculiar humour. 'Tis but rational to think that the devil, aping God, should imprint a sacrament of his covenant; and it is thought by many, of greatest repute in the learned world, that whatsoever way, whether by accident or otherwise, such insensible marks be in the body, yet no such mark as theirs, every circumstance considered, is to be found with any other but themselves. I need not insist much in describing this mark, which is sometimes like a little teate, sometimes but a blewish spot; and I myself have seen it in the body of a confessing witch, like a little powder-mark, of a blea colour, somewhat hard, and withall insensible, so as it did not bleed when I pricked it."—A Discourse of Witchcraft, by Mr. John Bell, Minister of the Gospel at Gladsmuir, 1705, MS. [Quoted by T. D. Morison in his Edition of Sharpe's Witchcraft.]