“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.