“Dr. Calmeil, in his work on insanity,” remarks Figuier, “when reporting on the ecstatic theomania of the Calvinists, concludes that the disease must be attributed “in the simpler cases to HYSTERIA, and in those of more serious character to epilepsy.... We rather incline to the opinion,” says Figuier, “that it was a disease sui generis, and in order to have an appropriate name for such a disease, we must be satisfied with the one of the Trembling Convulsionaires of Cevennes.”[601]
Theomania and hysteria, again! The medical corporations must themselves be possessed with an incurable atomomania; otherwise why should they give out such absurdities for science, and hope for their acceptance?
“Such was the fury for exorcising and roasting,” continues Figuier, “that monks saw possessions by demons everywhere when they felt in need of miracles to either throw more light on the omnipotency of the Devil, or keep their dinner-pot boiling at the convent.”[602]
For this sarcasm the pious des Mousseaux expresses a heartfelt gratitude to Figuier; for, as he remarks, “he is in France one of the first writers whom we find, to our surprise, not denying the phenomena which have been made long since undeniable. Moved by a sense of lofty superiority and even disdain for the method used by his predecessors. Dr. Figuier desires his readers to know that he does not follow the same path as they. ‘We will not reject,’ says he, ‘as being unworthy of credit, facts only because they are embarrassing for our system. On the contrary, we will collect all of the facts that the same historical evidence has transmitted to us ... and which, consequently, are entitled to the same credence, and it is upon the whole mass of such facts that we will base the natural explanation, which we have to offer, in our turn, as a sequel to those of the savants who have preceded us on this subject.’”[603]
Thereupon, Dr. Figuier proceeds.[604] He takes a few steps, and, placing himself right in the midst of the Convulsionaires of St. Medard, he invites his readers to scrutinize, under his direction, prodigies which are for him but simple effects of nature.
But before we proceed, in our turn, to show Dr. Figuier’s opinion, we must refresh the reader’s memory as to what the Jansenist miracles comprised, according to historical evidence.
Abbé Paris was a Jansenist, who died in 1727. Immediately after his decease the most surprising phenomena began to occur at his tomb. The churchyard was crowded from morning till night. Jesuits, exasperated at seeing heretics perform wonders in healing, and other works, got from the magistrates an order to close all access to the tomb of the Abbé. But, notwithstanding every opposition, the wonders lasted for over twenty years. Bishop Douglas, who went to Paris for that sole purpose in 1749, visited the place, and he reports that the miracles were still going on among the Convulsionaires. When every endeavor to stop them failed, the Catholic clergy were forced to admit their reality, but screened themselves, as usual, behind the Devil. Hume, in his Philosophical Essays, says: “There surely never was so great a number of miracles ascribed to one person as those which were lately said to have been wrought in France upon the tomb of the Abbé Paris. The curing of the sick, giving hearing to the deaf and sight to the blind, were everywhere talked of as the effects of the holy sepulchre. But, what is more extraordinary, many of the miracles were immediately proved upon the spot, before judges of unquestioned credit and distinction, in a learned age, and on the most eminent theatre that is now in the world ... nor were the Jesuits, though a learned body, supported by the civil magistrates, and determined enemies to those opinions in whose favor the miracles were said to have been wrought, ever able distinctly to refute or detect them ... such is historic evidence.”[605] Dr. Middleton, in his Free Enquiry, a book which he wrote at a period when the manifestations were already decreasing, i. e., about nineteen years after they had first begun, declares that the evidence of these miracles is fully as strong as that of the wonders recorded of the Apostles.
The phenomena so well authenticated by thousands of witnesses before magistrates, and in spite of the Catholic clergy, are among the most wonderful in history. Carré de Montgeron, a member of parliament and a man who became famous for his connection with the Jansenists, enumerates them carefully in his work. It comprises four thick quarto volumes, of which the first is dedicated to the king, under the title: “La Verité des Miracles operés par l’Intercession de M. de Paris, demontrée contre l’Archeveque de Sens. Ouvrage dedié au Roi, par M. de Montgeron, Conseiller au Parlement.” The author presents a vast amount of personal and official evidence to the truthfulness of every case. For speaking disrespectfully of the Roman clergy, Montgeron was thrown into the Bastile, but his work was accepted.
And now for the views of Dr. Figuier upon these remarkable and unquestionably historical phenomena. “A Convulsionary bends back into an arc, her loins supported by the sharp point of a peg,” quotes the learned author, from the procès verbaux. “The pleasure that she begs for is to be pounded by a stone weighing fifty pounds, and suspended by a rope passing over a pulley fixed to the ceiling. The stone, being hoisted to its extreme height, falls with all its weight upon the patient’s stomach, her back resting all the while on the sharp point of the peg. Montgeron and numerous other witnesses testified to the fact that neither the flesh nor the skin of the back were ever marked in the least, and that the girl, to show she suffered no pain whatever, kept crying out, ‘Strike harder—harder!’
“Jeanne Maulet, a girl of twenty, leaning with her back against a wall, received upon her stomach one hundred blows of a hammer weighing thirty pounds; the blows, administered by a very strong man, were so terrible that they shook the wall. To test the force of the blows, Montgeron tried them on the stone wall against which the girl was leaning.... He gets one of the instruments of the Jansenist healing, called the ‘GRAND SECOURS.’ At the twenty-fifth blow,” he writes, “the stone upon which I struck, which had been shaken by the preceding efforts, suddenly became loose and fell on the other side of the wall, making an aperture more than half a foot in size.” When the blows are struck with violence upon an iron drill held against the stomach of a Convulsionaire (who, sometimes, is but a weak woman), “it seems,” says Montgeron, “as if it would penetrate through to the spine and rupture all the entrails under the force of the blows” (vol. i., p. 380). “But, so far from that occurring, the Convulsionaire cries out, with an expression of perfect rapture in her face, ‘Oh, how delightful! Oh, that does me good! Courage, brother; strike twice as hard, if you can!’ It now remains,” continues Dr. Figuier, “to try to explain the strange phenomena which we have described.”